Church & Community Centre Audio Visual
Edwards Sound is not just about large corporate avprojects. The Edwards team enjoy working with churches, community centres and volunteer groups, sharing our expertise to ensure that funds that have been generously donated or raised through a lot of hard work are spent wisely.
With years of experience in working with not-for-profits, Edwards understand your needs. Edwards will:
- LISTEN to what you want to achieve
- Freely offer EXPERTISE to ensure you future proof your purchase
- COLLABORATE with other companies such as architects or builders to achieve your goals
- SUPPORT you post-project to use the equipment
- MAINTAIN the equipment and relationship going forward
Edwards’ work with St Heliers Church and Community Centre in Auckland illustrates the company ethos. St Heliers is a Christian centre that welcomes all races and religions and offers the local neighbourhood a whole range of activities and events. In March 2015 they completed a nine month redevelopment of the centre and Edwards were privileged to be involved in every step of the journey.
The Centre had previously used Edwards Hire to provide equipment for an event and they were so impressed with the service and the helpful staff that they invited Edwards to have a role in the upcoming upgrade. The centre was planning an extension to the current building and a new two storey multi-purpose community venue. The existing space only had a data projector and screen with a pair of wall mounted speakers. The centre’s management were keen to embrace new technology that could support their vision for the new development.
LISTENING
The Edwards team listened to the church and community centre needs, which were diverse! They wanted a truly multipurpose AV System that could be used by many different people for many different types of activities and events including youth groups, yoga, ballet and music classes plus the church services. The vision included offering a standout venue for hire and state of the art AV was integral to achieving that goal.
EXPERTISE
As is the case with many not-for-profit organisations the funding was going to be sourced in stages. This meant that the project also had to be able to be implemented in phases. This presents its own issues and requires knowledge that can only be gained through experience. Edwards could keep the project efficient by identifying early on any opportunities to install cabling and inexpensive parts for phases of the job that wouldn’t be going ahead until 2 or 3 stages later, and if installed later would be far more costly and difficult.
COLLABORATION
After the initial meeting to understand the project requirements, Edwards presented a system design and an official quote and proposal. The project went through a couple of revisions for budgetary and scoping reasons, and then the project plan was broken into stages for the installation and to spread the financial hit over a period of time.
Edwards were relied on heavily to work with architects and building engineers at the early stages to ensure that the plans had the right cabling and the correct number and location of power points.
Once the project was underway, Edwards spent time coordinating with the building site manager on timelines to identify when cabling needed to be installed and when the hardware could be installed. Edwards also had to factor in that the venue was still in use during some phases. The project was a team effort and Edwards was a valuable member of the project group.
SUPPORT
Edwards’ solution to cater for the diverse needs of the church and community centre was a flexible modular audio-visual and sound system that could be used in six separate spaces or as a single combined space, or any combination in between! Edwards’ technicians ensured that the team at the community centre could operate the equipment and they are always at the end of the phone should anyone need a reminder!
MAINTENANCE
Edwards is now looking forward to growing the partnership and working with St Heliers to maintain the current system, install a control system to ease the operation of the new equipment and to begin work on upgrading the current church sound and projector system.
Watch the video:
Underpinning Edwards’s work with not-for-profits is the acknowledgement that many of the church or community group staff are volunteers and this may be the first time that they have been involved in an AV project. The Edwards team enjoy supporting groups on their journey into the world of sound and AV, finding functional and affordable solutions to meet your needs.
Contact Edwards today if your community group or church needs advice on an audio-visual solution or sound system.
Edwards offer a free no obligation consultation.
