Anna Mitchell explores how Kinly helped CFC turn its new London headquarters into a connected workplace, combining intuitive meeting technology with smart building functionality.
When CFC Underwriting moved to a new London headquarters, the shift was more than just bringing two offices together. The cyber insurance specialist was growing fast, taking on more people, working across more territories, and looking for a workplace that could keep pace with its ambitions. The new site had to encourage people back into the office, support global collaboration, and demonstrate, to staff and clients, that this was a technology-led business serious about the tools it used.
The project gave AV integrator Kinly the chance to turn an existing service relationship into something more substantial. The company had supported CFC’s previous offices at Gracechurch Street and Whittington Avenue but had not delivered a major project for the client before. When CFC decided to consolidate those sites into a single headquarters, Kinly was invited to tender alongside other integrators, ultimately winning the contract for the project.
The new facility stretched across six floors, from the reception and client-facing spaces through to work floors, meeting rooms, quiet rooms, booths, an IT tech bar, a training room, a health and faith room, a divisible room, a boardroom, an auditorium, central hubs, breakout areas, a lounge and a terrace. Each floor contained a mix of spaces, with meeting rooms ranging from smaller four-to-five-person and six-to-eight-person rooms to ten- and twelve-person meeting rooms and larger high-profile spaces.
The ambition was broader than AV. CFC wanted what Robert Goff, account manager at Kinly, describes as “a full end-to-end smart building”: QR code-enabled entry, smart lockers, desk booking, room booking, wayfinding, floor mapping, and meeting technology that would feel consistent wherever a user went. Kinly worked with GoBright on the workplace management layer, giving employees the ability to book desks, see floorplans, locate colleagues, check into spaces, and use smart desk functionality through an app.
CFC wanted a workplace that removed friction. Staff making the effort to commute needed confidence that the office would work for them: that desks were available, colleagues were present, and meeting spaces could be found and used easily. GoBright Interact units under desks provide at-a-glance availability, while NFC check-in and saved desk-height preferences help personalise hotdesking. “It’s a really nice way of building confidence,” says Goff. “You can see where your team are sitting, book a desk near them, and see who else has checked in.”
The emphasis on confidence runs throughout the AV strategy. Kinly’s task was to deliver rooms that were technologically capable but not intimidating. CFC wanted reliable Microsoft Teams Rooms experiences, wireless presentation, strong audio, quality camera coverage, and a visual language that fitted the premium interior design. It did not want tables cluttered with hardware or users confronted with a different operating model in every room.
The standard meeting room template was therefore deliberately consistent. Smaller four-to-five and six-to-eight-person rooms use Samsung QM series displays on Chief mounts, Crestron UC-B31-T Microsoft Teams Rooms systems with Jabra Panacast 50 cameras, Crestron touch interface hardware, and Crestron AirMedia wireless presentation. Ten-person rooms step up to Samsung 65-in QM65B displays and Crestron UC-M70-T systems, while 12-person rooms add a more developed audio and camera architecture: Samsung 75-in QM75B displays, Crestron UC-C100-T Teams Rooms kits, Huddly L1 cameras, Shure MXA920 ceiling array microphones, Q-SYS Core 610 DSP, Q-SYS SPA-Q amplifiers, Q-SYS AD-P6T ceiling loudspeakers, and Q-SYS I/O USB Bridge devices.
Kinly had to balance performance, cost, and simplicity. “We didn’t want to use too many different manufacturers,” says Goff. “We didn’t want this to be an over-complex space. The auditorium and the boardroom are quite complex spaces, because of the performance the client is looking for, but in the smaller rooms reliability and performance were key.”
That judgement was informed by Kinly’s service history with CFC. Before specifying the new HQ, the team looked back at the previous estate to understand recurring issues. “We sat with the service team and worked through previous tickets,” says Goff. “Is there a trend here? What pain points have they had? That’s one thing clients don’t do enough. They stick to ‘this is how we’ve always done it’, and for me that’s the worst thing you can say.”
Kinly brought CFC into conversations with manufacturers and encouraged hands-on evaluation. The client preferred Crestron, but the decision still had to be tested against the needs of each space. “We took CFC to different manufacturers and said, ‘what’s your preference? Let’s get you some demos, let’s get you hands-on time with the kit.’ Crestron were brilliant. They came in, did demos and proof of concept, and the client said, ‘we’re not moving away from Crestron now.’”
Crestron became central to the user experience, with Flex systems, AirMedia wireless sharing, TSS room booking panels with light bars, TSW touch panels and control processors deployed across the site. XiO Cloud provides remote monitoring, while Gude PDUs support power management to AV endpoints. Q-SYS forms a major part of the audio and management architecture, with Core processors, amplifiers, Dante capability, and networked loudspeakers supporting meeting rooms, social spaces, and specialist areas.
The most technically demanding spaces are the boardroom and auditorium. The boardroom is designed as a high-value client and leadership environment, with extensive glass, views across London, and challenging ambient light. Kinly deployed a Crestron 1 Beyond multi-camera system, based around six Crestron PTZ cameras and a multi-camera switching solution, alongside a Crestron UC-C100-T Teams Rooms kit. The room also includes a Samsung 98-in QM98T-B display, Samsung 1.5mm LED using IE-A series cabinets, Crestron AirMedia, DM NVX AV-over-IP encoders and decoders, Shure MXA920 ceiling microphones, Q-SYS Core Nano DSP, Q-SYS network ceiling loudspeakers, and Dante licensing.
The camera system was selected because the room had to look as good on a call as it did in person. “There’s a lot of glass,” says Goff. “You want the views of London, you want the nice glass, but it’s finding that balance with the ambient lighting, because cameras trying to pick up the perfect level of light can be a nightmare. With Crestron 1 Beyond, you’ve got multiple cameras, multiple viewpoints, but you always get that clear picture quality. You feel like you’re in the room with the team carrying out that meeting.”
The auditorium takes a different role, acting as a focal point for all-hands meetings, leadership communications, and larger presentations. A Samsung 136-in 1.5mm LED wall provides the visual centrepiece, supported by a Crestron UC-C100-T-WM Teams Rooms kit; a secondary Crestron 10-in wall touch panel; Aver PTZ330UV2 tracking cameras; AirMedia wireless sharing; DSAN PerfectCue; Q-SYS Core 610 DSP; Q-SYS amplification, ceiling and pendant loudspeakers; Shure wireless microphones; and a Shure MXA710 linear array microphone. Kinly also provided a Catchbox throwable microphone, branded for CFC, to make audience participation less formal.
“That’s been a game changer,” says Goff of the auditorium. “They’ve had a lot of their all-hands and company meetings in there. Rather than handing a microphone around, it’s a small foam cube with a microphone in it. It takes the edge off. They can throw it over, someone can hold it, and that becomes the microphone.”
Beyond the meeting spaces, Kinly’s design touches almost every part of the building. Reception uses Q-SYS pendant speakers and subwoofers, Bluestream Dante-to-analogue conversion and a Crestron touch panel. Central hubs and breakout areas combine Samsung displays, BrightSign XD235 digital signage players, Crestron DM NVX distribution, Q-SYS amplification and pendant or ceiling loudspeakers. The terrace includes weather-resistant Q-SYS landscape loudspeakers and a Crestron background music control panel, while the IT tech bar follows the smaller meeting room model but adds local Q-SYS audio and Bluetooth input.
The project also demanded close coordination with other trades. WP3 led the initial design, while Cardo handled interiors, blinds and lighting. The original main contractor, ISG, later went into administration and was replaced by Structure Tone, creating contractual, scheduling and variation challenges. Kinly had to maintain momentum while renegotiating responsibilities and keeping communication open.
“It was a shock,” says Goff. “We were asking, does this all come to a stop? There were contractual obligations, kit still needed to be purchased, labour, extra mandates, variations. We were lucky that Structure Tone came in and took over, but there was a lot in the background to align everyone to the project.”
The difficulty was compounded by a familiar pressure in major fit-outs: AV often comes at the end, just as everyone wants rooms opened and operational. “It’s so easy to mess up projects on that scale,” says Goff. “AV always comes last. It’s the architecture, HVAC, interior designers, and then someone says, ‘put some AV in there.’ But it’s all glass. The light is going to be terrible, the speakers are going to be terrible, the ambient noise is going to be terrible. You must have those conversations early.”
In the boardroom, that meant working with blinds and environmental controls because daylight and heat have a direct impact on display performance and camera quality. In other areas, it meant protecting the design intent by keeping technology discreet, reducing table clutter and ensuring devices matched the aesthetic language of the interior.
Kinly also looked beyond handover. Recognising the scale of change for CFC’s staff, it produced training videos showing employees how to use meeting rooms, book lockers, reserve desks, find spaces, and enter the building. The aim was to reduce dependence on IT and make users more self-sufficient.
“Not everyone has the confidence to say, ‘I don’t know how this room works,’” says Goff. “They might just not use that room, or they’ll do calls from their laptop and it won’t be a great experience. The videos show them where to find the meeting ID, what to press, and how to start. If you multiply those questions by 100, 200, 300 people, the number of tickets drops drastically.”
CFC also took Kinly’s advice to place a managed on-site engineer in the building after completion. Initially planned as a six-month support role, it was extended for a further six months and ultimately helped CFC justify hiring its own permanent support engineer. For Goff, that aftercare is part of what made the project successful. It was not a case of installing the system and leaving.
“The managed on-site engineer was worth his weight in gold,” he says. “He could run up to the boardroom, do checks in the morning, reboot what needed rebooting and say the room was fine for the day. If there was an issue before a meeting, he could solve it or raise a ticket with our support team.”
The project has now become a reference point for Kinly, with CFC allowing potential clients to walk the space, use the technology and hear directly about the experience. That is perhaps the clearest indication that the relationship has moved beyond supply and installation.
Goff says the lesson is simple: technology only works when it is tied to the way a business actually operates. “Yes, we are the AV experts,” he says. “But first we need to understand the business. There’s no point going in with a potential solution if you don’t understand how their business works.”
At CFC, that understanding shaped everything from the 136-in LED wall in the auditorium to the light-bar room booking panels in the corridors, from the Crestron 1 Beyond cameras in the boardroom to the GoBright desk booking used every day by staff. The result is a workplace designed to reduce uncertainty. Users know where to sit, where colleagues are, how to join a meeting and what to expect when they walk into a room. Behind that simplicity sits a carefully coordinated AV and smart building infrastructure, delivered through a project that required technical judgement, commercial agility, and sustained support.
In other words, Kinly did not just deliver rooms with technology in them. It delivered a workplace that gives CFC’s people confidence to use the office, collaborate with global teams, and show clients a business whose technology reflects its ambition.
Tech-Spec
Audio
Bluestream DA22DIG Dante to analogue convertors
Q-SYS amplifiers, AcousticDesign speakers, unD6IO-BT Bluetooth wallplates, Core processors, and USB bridges
Shure Microflex Advance ceiling array microphones and Microflex Wireless microphone system
Soundtrack Your Brand BGM players
Video & Network
Aver PTZ330UV2 PTZ cameras
BrightSign XD235 digital signage players
Chief MSM1U and Fusion wall mounts, and LSCUB Voyager trolley
Crestron Flex videoconferencing systems, AirMedia wireless collaboration systems, DM-NVX AV-over-IP platform, TSW touchscreens, RMC4 and CP4N control processors, TSS-770-B-S room booking panels, 1 Beyond camera system, and XiO Cloud platform
DSAN PerfectCue cueing system
GoBright smart building platform and Interact devices
Gude networked PDUs
Huddly L1 cameras
Jabra Panacast 50 cameras
Netgear GSM4248PX network switches
Samsung 50-in, 55-in, 65-in, 75-in, and 98-in QM Series displays and IEA 1.5mm LED cabinets, LED S Box