Caerphilly - Penallta House
Penallta House - Caerphilly
When Caerphilly Council asked us
to design an unique Queue Management system for Penallta House, their iconic
new Headquarters, we looked forward to our first visit. The 5-storey construction
costing £20M combines the latest eco-friendly materials with stunning contemporary
design. The Reception area contains the largest unsupported glass face in Wales and
is separated from the Customer Service area by a striking 5-storey atrium.
Penallta House had been fitted with a network of large 50"
LCD screens showing "Caerphilly in Vision" and each screen was divided into 3 parts.
The bottom section contained a scrolling RSS feed to display urgent messages that could
be updated in seconds. The side panel contained the latest Council news and the largest
part of each screen was dedicated to Council information and campaigns.
The Customer Service centre had one such screen
and we designed two Queue Management Web pages so that, when customers are called
for service, the largest part of the screen automatically changes to
show Queue Management information. Our Web pages were designed using GretagMacbeth
Colour Calibration to achieve accurate colour matching to the Reception signage.
The acoustics of the atrium demanded that we only used a discreet sounder to alert
customers and this was placed next to the LCD screen.
Reception was provided with Smartkey,
our Web-based Virtual key pad and a POS desktop printer to print the Queue Management
tickets. Smartkey was also used by Customer Service and the interview rooms on
Standard Rich client PCs to call customers for service. In this way, we were able to
provide Caerphilly Council with a customised Queue Management system to co-ordinate
with Penallta House and future developments under consideration include integration
with Northgate CRM.