Nordic multidisciplinary consulting group COWI has decided to take AV consulting into its portfolio of disciplines. COWI is already established in related areas such as audio, lighting and IT infrastructure and the addition of AV, and a coupling to building automation, will form the cornerstones for the group's future development of consulting competencies within workspace technologies and smart buildings.
The AV discipline will be headed by Kristian Glahn, who joins COWI from independent AV consultants EnCollab.
Glahn has more than 25 years of experience in the AV industry and a long history as an active member of AVIXA. "Today meeting spaces of any kind, and the audiovisual technologies supporting them, have the same importance to the knowledge-based organization as the production line has to the manufacturing company. That means that the scope and impact of strategies and investments in AV are much bigger than before. Hence, audiovisual systems are a bigger part of an increasing number of projects and the necessity and importance of co-design and coordination with other disciplines, to get full value, have led to the decision to include AV for the future," he added.
The decision to establish AV consulting as a discipline comes just month ahead of COWI agreeing to buy Denmark's biggest architectural practice Arkitema Architects, with 550 employees and a presence throughout the Nordics.
At any given moment, COWI is involved in more than 12,000 projects. COWI have more than 85 years of experience in the business, and more than 6,600 employees