Guildhall & Mansion House
To eliminate the need for a myriad of outside broadcast vehicles that are traditionally needed to cover major state visits and banquets.
These historic buildings play an important role in the city of London, the Guildhall being the venue for state and civic meetings and playing host to the world's leading dignitaries and Mansion House providing not only living and working space for the Lord Mayor of the city of London and his household but also hosting large ceremonial entertainments and banquets.
Many of the major events taking place at both the Guildhall and the Mansion House are of national and often international interest. These newsworthy events were previously broadcast to the world from numerous outside broadcast vehicles littering the concourse to the Guildhall and the streets around the Mansion House, all vying for prime positions from which to relay their programme content up to the satellites. The net result of all this activity was to curtail and often obliterate the arriving guests' view of the buildings' spectacular architecture.
Working with BBC Technologies who were the project managers, and the Corporation of London's management staff, IVC Media were commissioned to design a system that would provide not only a solution to the above, but also a solution which would eliminate the need for television camera cables to be draped internally around the floors of the buildings.
The buildings' heritage sites status limited the scope for this project which was to provide an internal cable network covering all the strategic camera locations from where the coverage of events could be relayed back through the buildings to new television control rooms located in the basements.
Not only was there a requirement for all technology equipment and cabling to be completely out of sight but, in many instances, it was not possible to utilise the most suitable locations and cable routes.
Through the perseverance of our design and project management team, we were eventually able to provide a solution which met all the criteria.
This was achieved by fitting individually designed camera boxes which blended into the various decor and architecture and by cable networks installed along often circuitous routeways that avoided the cutting of walls or the use of surface mounted trunking between each of the boxes and the basement control rooms.
The Mansion House control room is connected to the Guildhall control via fibre optic links from where the switching and routing of the relevant events is relayed back, again via fibre links, to the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane. The BBC act as the booking agents for the Corporation for broadcasters wishing to broadcast material from either of the buildings.
The new facility was first used to cover a speech by the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's Banquet at which event there was a noticeable absence of all the previously required outside broadcast vehicles and trailing cables.
IVC Media also supplied a mobile television interview bay which provides the facility for Corporation staff to conduct their own television interviews, the content of which can then be transmitted over the fibre links to BBC Television Centre.
