We hope everyone here in the United States had a delightful, enjoyable, and uneventful Thanksgiving!  Listening to one of the local radio talk show hosts, he commented that Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday, as it brings families together and is not yet overly commercialized.  We agree!  Everyone here at TA reported they had a great time, ate too much food, and had too many leftovers.  As we move closer to the New Year, we want to thank each and every one of you – for taking the time to read our newsletter, for the comments you send our way, for including us on your projects, for being a part of our lives – Happy Thanksgiving!  And Happy Holidays!

Design-Build Conference: Hailed as the largest Design-Build event in the world, the Design-Build Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas, NV, November 8-10 included 5 learning tracks covering everything from acquisitions and contracts to teamwork and quality assurance.  As a sponsor and exhibitor, we were pleased to see the record attendance levels.  Next year the conference will be in Nashville, October 18-20.

To improve student interactions, wired table microphones are mounted between every two students on the tiered student desks. The microphones are normally muted but when its “push to talk” button is pressed, the microphone audio is fed to the both the local audio system in the room for everyone to here and to the far end through the CODEC.  At the same time the control system determines which microphone was activated and commands one of the two pan/tilt/zoom student cameras to zoom in on that microphone location.  The control system then puts that image on the screen locally and sends it to the far end.  Immediately the students are recognized for their question and both the local and far end feel more a part of the same classroom even though the other side may be hundreds of miles away.

This use of technology has slightly higher up front costs in equipment and control system programming but the long-term costs in reduced staff and reliable operation are significant.  The most interesting aspect of these systems is how students tend to interact with each other once they are on camera.  Initial designs had the far end classroom always visible on one of the two front screens as long as the sites were connected.  But students complained that they were being watched too closely by everyone in class, particularly for far end sites that held only 15-20 students.  For these rooms, even on a wide camera shot it was easy to see what everyone was doing.  Eventually students began to shy away from the cameras and try to sit in locations as far from their view as possible.  However, simple control system program changes allow the system to be reconfigured so that students are only shown on screen when they have a question and press the push to talk microphone.  To keep the instructor feeling connected to the remote site the far end view of the room is still shown on the projection screen seen by the instructor which is located at the rear of the room.  The advantage of these designs is once the systems are in place it becomes simply a control system programming issue to change the way they work, not a hardware or installation issue that drives up cost and reduces room availability while upgrades are in progress.

One challenge created by this natural (and quiet) heating and cooling system is that the overall background noise levels within the open plan office areas will be extremely low.  The natural system will also require passive airflow, so the open plan offices will incorporate low-height cubical walls.  In addition, the concrete floor/ceiling slabs will serve to absorb and release heat back into the building.  Therefore, the slabs are required to be exposed, which means there can be no traditional acoustical tile ceiling.  These three elements create a situation where speech privacy between cubicles is almost non-existent, requiring the addition of a sound masking system.

To help increase the amount of absorption within the space, supplemental sound absorptive material will be located on top of the ceiling of private offices and conference rooms in the core of each floor.
 
Another challenge is the amount of exterior noise audible within the facility.  With extremely low background noise levels, exterior noises are more easily heard and understood.  This increases the distraction level of employees.  With the proper attention to window and wall details, and the addition of the sound masking system, this challenge was resolved.  

While these alternative systems added 5 percent to the overall cost of the building, energy savings will more than pay for the added expense during the construction phase. 

The concept involves setting up a workstation the way you want it, installing Deep Freeze, then restarting the workstation, which will restore the original settings.  Users have access to “thawed” areas, which are not protected, in order to save files and data permanently.  Added utilities, professional, and enterprise versions all add various capabilities.