News 2008

Caerphilly's amazing atrium

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.