Pardeep Gill: With the Wi Fi, we're looking at things. There are things you can do with certain Wi Fi manufacturers where you can power down all of the APs on the floor, apart from the ones near the entrances. So when something connects it, then it powers the APs up. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's pretty 

smart. 

Pardeep Gill: So you can reduce your PoE load on your switches and you're able to do all sorts of interesting things there to reduce your, your, your overall load that's being drawn out or comms room.

Hi and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we have a great customer perspective. We've got Pardeep Gill, who is a Senior Enterprise Architect at a large legal firm. And we specifically got into the requirements for new offices, greenfield sites. Pardeep had a really interesting perspective on the kind of requirements for projects like that.

How the architecture and facilities team work with the IT team. where AV comes into play and more widely thinking about the user experience and what people need and want from office spaces these days. Many thanks to Pardeep for taking the time. Really appreciate his insights and also thanks to Luware who are the sponsor of this podcast.

Really appreciate their support. They've just recently launched their new look attendant console for Microsoft Teams. So if you're looking for an attendant console, definitely worth a look. Many thanks and on with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Excited to have another customer perspective and a friend who I've worked with over the years.

Pardeep is a Senior Enterprise Architect at a global legal firm. We're going to get into a little bit about his role and his history. And then zero in on kind of Greenfield sites, new builds and the implications for. Collab, you see new ways of working. So Pardeep thanks very much for coming on Teams Insider.

Thanks for having me, Tom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So maybe just give us a little bit of context about you and your background. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah, sure. Um, so I've been in technology for, God, 25 years now. Um, started at a financial, a financial organization, a global investment bank. Um, and I actually worked there for about 14 years doing a number of different roles.

Uh, started as most of us do in desktop support, um, and dealing room support. Best, best ways to learn. It is, it is. Yeah. So baptism of fire. Um, it was, uh, It was a, it was a great role. It was a small organization in the UK at the time. Um, but the, the bank grew and, uh, I worked my way up through the different technology ranks, um, and ended up working as, um, one of the enterprise architects.

There for the, for the bank globally and actually helped worked alongside a number of people, um, there and set up the architecture function, um, for the bank. 'cause it was quite a new function within the organization. So yeah, I was there about 14 years. Um, and when I left I had moved into a global legal services firm where I am now.

Um, doing a similar role as a senior enterprise architect, um, working across lots of different technologies. I suppose my main focus areas on my speciality is probably desktop and infrastructure are the two areas that I spend most of my time dabbling with. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Awesome. And, uh, we were talking in the prep and, uh, one of the things you've done a few times over your time at different companies is like new office greenfield site kind of scenario.

So I thought that would be an interesting place to jump into. Um, so what, I mean, let's talk that through, what does that mean in terms of a project and how does it split between kind of the, the architect facilities, what you do, what IT does, what does that look like? 

Pardeep Gill: It's really, it's an interesting area because actually technology within buildings has been, I would say, quite a neglected space for a long time.

Um, The traditional technology areas, there's, there's lots of focus on cellular network, for example, getting the servers right, that there's, there's the right people doing the right things in those spaces, and there's right, there's the good, there's proper design work going on, but traditionally, the other building services, have been run by the operations team who are not technology experts and they do their best to get it right.

But these services, and when I say services, I mean, AV is a typical example here. Um, these services tend to, um, uh, or have become a lot more, um, IT focused over the years compared to where they used to be. It used to be a TV on the wall with a, with a VGA connector on the ends, and you'd walk into a room and you would plug in and it kind of just works.

Nowadays, there's a lot more to it, especially in some of the more complex spaces. And, um, with the firm that I'm working for at the moment, like most, most, Professional services firms actually they, they tend to have one or two really large offices where you've got the focus and the right people to and the space to deliver really good meeting room experiences, but a lot of their other offices.

will be a much smaller where space is a premium and you need meeting rooms to do lots of different things which is where technology comes into the design a lot more these days to make that multi purpose room really truly flexible and work for different scenarios in different configurations so it it's it's all of those adjacent.

Those technology adjacent services, if you like, that are now coming into technology and from an architecture perspective, we're seeing things like, um, um, the challenges around putting proper service wrappers around some of these services that haven't been a traditional technology service in the past.

It's not just AV, you look at physical security and surveillance is another one that used to be. All coax cabling in a segregated system, and it's now all IP with AI sat on top of it. And, um, what you've got, where you've got to start to consider things like GDPR considerations, where the data being stored, how long are we keeping it for?

Who has access to it? All of those good things alongside are lots of these services where operations, no fault of their own, but haven't really had to consider that some of that stuff in the past. So it's a, it's a, it's a real, it's a real challenge. It reminds me a bit of IT back in the 90s, if you like, where it was just get on with it.

But nowadays we're having to build those services around it. So from an architecture perspective, you've got to really start to educate people. Actually, we need to think about some of this stuff a bit differently. And we need to do some of this stuff a bit differently. So we're able to really truly support the, um, the business when they're trying to use some of these spaces and some of these services in the building.

Um, but we've, we've taken, we've started to take it a step further now because obviously we're all geeks at heart, right? We love, we love playing with some of this new technology and, um, we're looking at lots of new ways of doing things in the building, which, um, which I think really changed the experience of how people use buildings.

So from a tech perspective, we're looking at, um, how we can, well, there's the obvious stuff, right? How do we keep everything consistent? So when you're, when you're in a building, you now have to use the meeting spaces, so they're all consistent across the board. Um, but alongside that, there are other things you can do, like, for example, how do we remove friction, um, and get better use of the space?

So. We, we touched on it when we, when we talked before we started this things like Microsoft places coming, how do you book desks? How do we move our spaces away from allocated seating to, um, to unallocated seating, especially in professional services firms, maybe where people are very used to having their own space and their own, um, their own dedicated desk.

So it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting looking at all of these other services, looking at where Microsoft are getting involved in starting to. To deploy their own platforms like places that we're all waiting to see where it comes, how it comes, how it lands. But alongside that, moving people away from an allocated desk creates a whole bunch of other issues, right?

People love their own space, as I mentioned. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, yeah, there are some cultural and people issues there. Particularly if they've had that in the past. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah, yeah, it's a real challenge. People love having their stuff around them. So what do you do? We look at, we look at lockers, right? For example, um, how do you allocate a manager in a building wide locker system where you've got a building of say, 2000 people, right?

What do you do from a technology perspective to support that? Um, you look at, Um, the different types of friction that might be created as you enter a building. So, um, the obvious one is we've all been there. Umbrella in one hand, you're on the phone in the other hand, and you're trying to get through the speed gates at the bottom of an office floor to get up to your, your floor.

How do you make, how do you take some of that friction away? Facial recognitions are an option, right? Or do you, how can you do use things like mobile credentials? These days everything's in your Apple wallet or your Android. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's interesting.

Pardeep Gill: How do you, do you really need to give people a piece of plastic these days?

Can we put things in the wallet? Um, when you get to the lifts, you lose connectivity. I so often see in my current building, people stood there in reception. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh, waiting to finish the call because they can't go up to their floor, yeah, of course.

Pardeep Gill: Exactly, If they're talking to somebody, they're talking to a, might be some, a client or somebody else, so they're waiting, they've sat, stood there.

And I've seen it all the way up to the most senior people in the organization. So it's, it's, it's, um, it's a challenge we are absolutely focused on solving, that we want things like 4G, 5G connectivity throughout the building. We want Wi Fi throughout the building, including in the lift. So we, we, we use the term street to see, um, that we want you to be able to walk in off the street and get all the way if you're, if you're somebody visiting to your meeting room, or if you're a member of staff to your desk without losing connectivity and stuff like that.

We're taking networks and other capabilities to a different level to just focus on removing some of that friction that you get when you're working in an office building. Um, 

it's really challenging 

Tom Arbuthnot: the first thing, the first thing that came to mind for you, I can tell you, you've been thinking this through is The use case, you haven't gone straight into there are these new 5G Pico cells and they're really cool.

It's like, here's the problem is like, we're giving the user friction on the gate through the lift to their seat. How do we remove those friction points? 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah, it goes big. So the, the other areas we, we, we're taking cues as well for what, what, uh, what sort of, um, uh, commercial services are doing. You look at.

Um, Costa, Starbucks, and being able to pre order your coffee. Actually, how far could we do that in the buildings? Right, so could we, for example, um, allow people to pre order their coffee before they get in? So, as they get up to the coffee shop, their coffee's waiting, they can get straight to the desk.

Another area of friction that you could remove. Um, could you, um, allow them to, uh, use their mobile credential to open their locker? Right. So again, it's all consistent through the building. Can we integrate that with secure print release? So again, your mobile credential allows you to release your print jobs.

It's just that consistency through the building and because it's going to be, there's going to be plenty of friction for people that That, um, are very used to their own space, right? It's going to be, it's going to be a change for them. So if we can find technology solutions that, to be honest, hopefully are invisible to them on their day to day basis, but have helped remove some of that friction is kind of where we want to end up.

Tom Arbuthnot: And have you felt a, uh, that there's a lot of motion at the moment about getting people back to the office, in the office more? I guess two questions. Have, Have you seen that? And is part of modern building design about making it appealing to come in? Like if you're going to make me look for three different key cards and you're going to cut off my connectivity and I can't find a room, why am I coming into town to go or whatever city is to go to that meeting?

So is that part of the thinking is it's a place you want to go to? 

Pardeep Gill: Absolutely. And you can see that with our, with our proper architects, if you'd like, when they're doing the building and the sort of services they put into the building.

Tom Arbuthnot: They'll be pleased you said proper architect. 

Pardeep Gill: It's, it's, you can tell by the way they've, they've designed the spaces.

They want to make them as attractive for people to come in as much as possible, but I, I, I'm in the office quite regularly. And. I've definitely seen over the last six, my personal experiences over the last sort of six, 12 months, the, the, the number of people coming in has definitely increased quite significantly.

Mondays and Fridays are always quiet, right? There's, there's, there's that, but even that is starting to improve, I think. But in our, in my existing building, the technology department sits as a, In an open plan unallocated seating model. Um, and unless you're booking a week in advance, you're not getting a seat on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Tom Arbuthnot: Oh, interesting. So that's a good fitness test of where it is at in terms of your 

Pardeep Gill: step and, and we see, we see it depending on, depending on the type of business that you're in. I think sometimes actually getting back to being in the office really helps. Um, especially I think more junior members of staff as well.

I think. I can't imagine when I was starting out my career. Doing it like this. 

Tom Arbuthnot: No, no, I feel actively bad for people coming into the space now. Everything I learned was. Being in early, staying late, going for lunch with people like those, those little pieces and like, how do you absorb that culture across any discipline?

But particularly actually in, uh, legal finser proserve, you're, you're wanting to attach yourself to someone senior and learn, and, and it's very, very hard, like in a kind of remote model. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's difficult. And I think, I think the more junior members of the teams are starting to see that themselves and that's, that's increasing people coming back to the office.

Tom Arbuthnot: So I heard from a, um, it was a, uh, Trading, uh, house, and they were saying their grads, this was over the pandemic. So there's a little bit, a little bit lapsed now in terms of the data, but they were like, uh, 12 months behind where they thought they would be compared to previous years because they hadn't had the same level of face time.

And they were like, it's a notable, you know, averaging over. Hundreds of people on these grad programs. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's just the way grads and trainees learn, right? As you said, it's just that, that osmosis of sitting with someone senior, listening to them talk. But if you're at home, everything's a meeting and it's impossible.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, 

Pardeep Gill: you don't get the same exposure, but, but no, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, it's been my life for a couple of years. This, the up and coming relocation and new building that we're working on, it's, um, it's, uh, it's exciting though, because we're getting the opportunity to really push boundaries. We're supported on pushing boundaries and making sure the tech is truly first class in the building.

Tom Arbuthnot: It feels like there's a lot of innovation happening in that space. Like you say, on like security, also on, um. Like green and carbon neutral and all that piece as well. I know Cisco have been doing loads in the building kind of area as well. I'm guessing that's another, another consideration. 

Pardeep Gill: It absolutely is.

It's, it's, it's a massive focus for, for lots of organizations, including us. Um, from a technology perspective, there's obviously quite a. Quite a few levers we can pull, and we're trying to pull, so it ranges from doing things like, um, when you're ordering a few thousand monitors, making sure they don't turn up with all the cables you don't need. Making sure they don't turn up with a manual in every box. 

Tom Arbuthnot: I'm so, I'm so glad that was the first thing you jumped to. I've been talking to, um, like I spend a lot of time talking in the different devices, OEMs. And I feel like there's some that are doing a really good job on like sustainable packaging and thinking things through and accessories becoming part items.

So you don't need them. Um, so it's, it's great to validate that you jumped to that as one of the use cases, because I think people are making decisions as much on that, particularly in, um, In our space or my space of room technology, like you can argue some of the technology is similar. Actually, the supply differentiation might be your, you know, your culture and environmental credentials as much as anything else.

Pardeep Gill: No, so it's so true. It's, it's, it's, it's a key, um, part of any RFP process we undertake, right? We, we focus on it. heavily. We've got a dedicated team helping us with it, but we, we, we've like, it's not just cables and paperwork, right? It's even to the point where obviously in a large office building, all the monitors are going on monitor arms.

We don't need the stands with them. So don't send, send them to us. They're all going to go in the skip, but they're also taking it a step further. Some organizations are going to support you and take it a step further where they'll say, actually, if you're not doing all of this, we are going to change our packaging strategy and we're going to put, Four screens in a box for you, so you get less packaging up front as well.

So it's, it's, it's really good. Some, some organizations are much better at it than, than others, and it's a key, can be a key differentiator because a lot of the tech isn't that different when you really break it down. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I, I say like, you can, you can make particularly on things like Monitors, like the, there's a few vendors that I would say are, I'm sure they'll all say they're massively different, but they're much of a muchness for an office use case.

And that could be the meaningful differentiation. Yeah. 

Pardeep Gill: No, and it's, it's, it's important that we're, we're looking at also from a sustainability perspective, how we really, truly reduce our, our energy consumption. Um, from a technology perspective. So you mentioned Cisco, they're, they're, they are pushing the boundaries here.

Um, they're doing some great things, even, even, I think, I can't remember what they call it, but it's almost an extended standby is coming to their devices soon, which will essentially shut the device down to the point where it's usually less than half a watt. Right. Half a watt, sorry. Wow. Yeah. Um, and, um, to the point where it's not even accessible on the networks.

They shut the NIC down as well. Um, but we are also looking ourselves at making sure that All of the technology in the building that in a traditional building today, you will see screens and meeting room systems on 24 by seven. We're looking at how can we truly shut this stuff down at the socket when we don't need it.

So out of business hours over the weekend, properly turn this stuff off. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, cause you're right. There's a, there's a subtle difference there between having the, uh, the monitors in the rooms or the panels in the room turn off and everything else is ticking along versus actually powering down and things like, uh, being smart around floors and air con and heating and stuff as well, like nobody's.

Nobody's badged into that floor, why are we air conning it? 

Pardeep Gill: Why are we doing it? Same for the Wi Fi, you, with the Wi Fi we're looking at things, there are things you can do with certain Wi Fi manufacturers where you can power down all of the APs on the floor apart from the ones near the entrances, so when something connects it then powers the AP's up.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's pretty smart. 

Pardeep Gill: So you can reduce your PoE load on your switches and you're able to do all sorts of interesting things there to reduce your, your, your overall load that's being drawn out, your comms rooms and your SCRs and MERs. So there's lots of smart things you can do in that space that where we're investigating.

It's a, it's a real. Delicate balance between creating the right experience for our staff and our clients coming into the 

building 

versus driving that agenda as much as we can to really drive down our energy, our energy consumption. But it's a really interesting challenge. It's stuff that I think a lot of organizations haven't done yet.

So when you're talking to. To manufacturers, they're keen to engage with you because you're trying to push the boundaries here a little bit. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Pardeep Gill: Some of them are also quite nervous about it when you're talking about turning their equipment off regularly. Um,

Tom Arbuthnot: so it's interesting, isn't it? Whether they've considered it at the equipment design phase or whether they're like, Ooh, this, this particular, whatever it is.

Is it going to instantly snap back to being like, like, like legal's one where the room has to be ready the second somebody walks in. So if you're powering systems down, there's some kind of motion sensor there that needs to be back up and running. So, um, another thing, like one of the cliches about new builds that you hear is like the architects come in and design a space and then ITAV gets to come in next and be like, oh, well, we want two 50 inch screens and the entire thing is glass, and it's con polished concrete floors because those look awesome, but are horrible for audio. Have you found that IT and architects are engaging earlier and kind of what are the thoughts around the, the AV story? 

Pardeep Gill: That's a great question. Um. I think it's improving is what I would say.

For a large scale building when you're doing a head office with multiple floors and lots of seats, you do get engaged at the right time and, and we're able to include things like, um, uh, acoustic, engineers to help design some of these spaces, right? So it's less of an issue that they're more open to softer finishes, uh, finishes that absorb sound, but there's still problems with big marble tables and glass.

Everyone loves it, right? So it's absolutely initial. I also think the tech has got better to deal with it, right? Some of the new equipment from some of the audio manufacturers is, is, is excellent when it comes to dealing with audio in some of our meeting rooms. I'll say where, where we, we, As an organization still suffer from this where we do suffer is in smaller scale projects where maybe it's a refurb of a floor in a building across the other side of the world where they don't have as big a budget and a lot of the stuff is designed before technology are involved.

And then we're asked to, as you said, we're asked to then come along and say, Oh, make this work. And you're like, Hmm, I don't know if we can. There's only so far you can go with removing reverb and echo and all of that sort of thing. It's a, it's a, it is a, it is a real challenge. But as I said, I think the tech, tech is catching up.

The, the stuff built into the codecs, whether, regardless of which manufacturer you're using is really good these days. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I think the stuff that's done codec side and cloud side on some of the cloud platforms as well is mad compared to where we were five or six years ago in terms of the awful input they can take that they make acceptable, like, like not great, but like not, not horrific.

Pardeep Gill: Yeah. Yeah. I remember we had a, uh, we've got an office over in the U S where we refurbed the office and, um, their big, their boardroom, uh, had a big, um, marble table in, but they also stuck in two, um, coffee machines. In the room. So when you're on a meeting and somebody would go and make a coffee, it was deafening on the far end because the mics would automatically zoom in on where the loudest noise is coming from.

When, when you start to get the acoustic boundary sort of technology, the background noise removal, it totally solved the problem. The tech has really, really helped. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Now that's interesting to hear because that's such a, I think, again, this is another thing for vendor selection that's interesting is all meeting room systems sort of look the same.

On paper, but there's some real practical differences in terms of things like that. Like we've all got like noise canceling or we've all got audio optimization. But like you say, the, uh, the, the, the proof is in the pudding in some of those cases, particularly when you've got those hard rooms. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, there are, there are some soft problems you can't solve, obviously, but, um, it's, our life's got a lot easier over the last, I'd say, 18 months, 24 months or so.

Um, I think the other side of it for me is consistency. I touched on it a little bit earlier, but that, that experience from an AV perspective, today at the moment, it's still, I think it's still developing, right? So if you look at, for example, their MTR ecosystem. It's the best for Microsoft Teams meetings.

There's no doubt about that. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Pardeep Gill: Um, it's, it gives you that best, that best experience. And to be fair, most organizations, most of their meetings these days are in Microsoft Teams. But if you do need to use other platforms, like let's say Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, and half a dozen other, whatever it might be.

Um, that's where I think MTRs need to catch up. And they're getting better, but they're still quite focused on that WebRTC style experience, which isn't the best in those platforms. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yep. 

Pardeep Gill: Um, and often creates an entirely different experience depending on which platform you're creating, you're joining, sorry, at the time.

And that's one of the challenges we, we came across where we looked at focusing on a provider that could give us consistent connectivity to all of those platforms, maybe with a slight compromise from an MTR perspective from Microsoft Teams meetings, but really from a member of staff's perspective when they're walking into one of those rooms, they're doing the same thing regardless of what meeting they're joining and they're getting the same experience.

Yeah, they get used to that very quickly. Um, so yeah, we spent a lot of time assessing. Lots of different MTR providers, be it Neat, Logi, Lenovo, all of those in that space. And we then spent a lot of time looking at a provider that could do All of those platforms like, like a Cisco, for example, to see, to see where we wanted to end up and we put it in front of our, our, our people and our staff and, um, got their feedback and, and actually they wanted something a bit more consistent.

The one advantage of a platform like. Um, the, the WebEx platform devices from Cisco is that we can flip to MTR in the future when we think they've, because they will inevitably when they catch up in that space. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. You can, you can kind of hedge your bets in that scenario, can't you, of like, we can run them in the WebEx mode.

It's interesting you brought that up. We had Ryan McCarthy on the pod a few weeks ago, and he's a UC engineer at another legal, and he said, Similar things like seems like legal in particular is that the need for interop is so high because you are responding to the client's meeting or the client's client's meeting like you, you have to be able to join those different scenarios.

Pardeep Gill: It actually goes further than that, right? What our lawyers are telling us is that, um, sometimes the client dictates the platform that has to be used, right? So, so not only are we joining their, let's say, say we are a Teams house and they are a Google Me house, for example. Not only we join their Google Me meetings.

We need to create our own because our lawyers want to be involved. Oh, interesting. 

Tom Arbuthnot: They're literally dictating, like, even if you arrange a meeting, you must be part of the deal. Yes, in Google Meet, 

Pardeep Gill: yeah, for example. So, so as an organization, we obviously have Webex licenses. We have Zoom licenses. We have Google Meet licenses.

We've got the whole, whole bunch for different clients, depending on what needs to be, um, what's required for that particular client or the best way to meet them. Because, look ultimately, they are clients of the firm, we want them to have the best experience. So we need to make sure our meeting rooms, which is really hard, by the way.

Tom Arbuthnot: I say, if it's a pressure on you in IT architecture to, it's a very hard challenge or none of the cloud platforms are playing super nice together. Like you say, there's that WebRTC direct guest join thing, but like the industry doesn't, it doesn't feel like unfortunately industry's got a hundred percent behind it.

And there are interop services like Pexip, there's what Cisco are doing, but all of them are a here's some compromises, make your, make your choice. 

Pardeep Gill: It feels like it's getting better, is what I would say. I think Microsoft are playing nicely with people like Cisco and Pexip. Yeah. Um, creating a, a better experience.

'cause it, the, the other thing around WebRTC, even if you join it from a Cisco unit, it's, the other problem is things like HDMI ingest doesn't work. Right. And, and for, from our perspective, I get it and I understand why, but. Me trying to explain that to a non technical person, you quickly lose them, right?

And they don't, they don't really care. Quite rightly, they don't care. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, no, they shouldn't. We start like, as technologists, we start saying, well, here's the reason. And like, so what? Like, make it work. 

Pardeep Gill: Make it work. That's what we're paying them for, right? Ultimately, um, Things like the work that Microsoft are doing with Cisco and Pexip are fixing some of those problems.

Right? Yeah. So it's getting better. I just wish it would get better a bit quicker, personally, but we're heading in the right direction. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Pardeep, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's nice to talk about that. I really feel like you've dropped some really good information on that greenfield new office world.

It's a really exciting space. 

Pardeep Gill: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Tom. It's been great. Thank you. Awesome.