Who installs your classroom AV?

[toffee]

Who installs your classroom AV? things like projector swaps, new projector installs, interactive displays and classroom speakers. Just interested to see how many do it in-house?

[caffrey]

I do it all in house, there's very very little I contract out (usually due to budget)

[JRowley]

All in house, as above budget is a key factor.

[Out_of_Sync]

In house

[hardtailstar]

In house here too unless we dont have the time.

[AJWhite1970]

In house - but not by me, I'm not even allowed to hold a screwdriver. My DNM loves doing jobs like that

[christhetech]

We do some of it in house, mainly the lighter stuff. For Interactive screen installs, we normally use All Office, who are the company that we tend to purchase most of our AV equipment from. There's no way I'm even attempting to fit 65" & 75" screens to a wall on my own, and if it was to be done in house, that's how it would end up. I let the reseller bring a couple of their guys in to do the banging and hanging. Their installations have always been carried out to a really high standard and they don't take the proverbial with their pricing either. They are installing screens around the country every day of the week, so they can get them up on the wall and working far quicker than I would. If I could rely on somebody to assist me with installing screens, I'd probably do it myself and save a little bit of cash, but as soon as there's heavy lifting involved, others always seem to find something else that they are far too busy with to assist.

[dhicks]

They are installing screens around the country every day of the week, so they can get them up on the wall and working far quicker than I would.

 

Agreed - it would take us a reasonable chunk of a day to organise getting appropriate equipment, people and tools into place, and even then there's a good chance one of us will need to rush off elsewhere to fix something else, so getting a company in that does this sort of thing all the time and has a van load of tools ready is the best option for us. They can also generally organise taking away rubbish and / or old equipment, which if you have limited storage space is something to think about. We've used ON-AV in the past, who have been consistantly excellent, and we were also impressed with the work done by Stone over the summer installing some new touch screens - they didn't just stick the screen on the wall, they took the time to cable-wrap all the cables neatly back to the desktop PC on the desk and get everything plugged in neatly.

[Fazza]

Replacements we do ourselves but if a ceiling mount is required we get our Electrician to do it as he'd be putting in a power spur any way so while he's up there he does the cable runs for the projector and speakers too.

 

Over the summer we added HDMI connectivity to our projectors (including a HDMI socket on the wall) along with replacing some speakers which we did ourselves. If an urgent job comes in to replace some damaged speakers then it simply depends on our workload if we do it ourselves or get someone in.

[Rob_D]

Swapping things over or installation of kit we already have (or ask the site team). If it's a new installation then we get it done as part of purchase.

So, our new Smart interactive screens come with installers, but when we wanted to move the old clevertouch it was us and the site team re-hanging it.

[Mako]

In house.

 

For projector mounts our site managers can put those in place. For wall-mounted things, they can do the same or we can do it ourselves. The only thing that would be outsourced would be anything requiring an electrician.

[forkies]

In house usually. We have more tools than our site team and do installs in the same time as any contractors we have had in to do installs. I really want another person on my team so we can do more, as recently I have had a lot changed using contractors due to it crossing over with building works and more than we could do alongside other jobs, having one more person would have made it manageable. Luckily our BM understands what is needed and asks me so costings for contractors can be included if we are too busy.

[Sylv3r]

I am happy for my team to swap projectors etc onto existing brackets etc in the event of having to come down to change lamp / replace projector but a new install I am more comfortable getting someone in from a liability point of view.

 

We don't tend to bother with interactive screens as nobody uses them, but we are happy to stick up some normal wipe-boards to project onto.

[AlanD]

In house. Its not exactly rocket science...and you get to put it up robustly and properly the way you want it, rather than the way they want to do it, with the correct length leads...and sound cabled so the remote control turns volume up and down via the projector...and network to the projector is working etc. Some charge as much as £250 which is ridiculous.

[rad]

We outsource the installation to one of 2 companies. Why, because our site team aren’t perfectionists compared to the installers and we’d rather it done properly. One or two they did do you end up with a wonky projection. The latest purchase was 3 x 85 inch smart board screens, no way I’d want to get involved in them. The installers know what they are doing, what battening to add, where to run cables etc.

[Jamman960]

I've always had new installs done by contractors, I've often done internals moves myself in the past but they always took far longer than any contractor would take and I've generally got better things to be doing, our site manager isn't the most helpful as everything seems to be done on a favour basis.

[Jkearney]

All in house