SITUATION:
The Human Rights Campaign made the decision to purchase an office building and establish a permanent high-visibility headquarters in Washington, DC. As part of their multi-million dollar project, HRC wanted to incorporate state of the art communications systems to support their central mission of promoting understanding and education of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) issues.

APPROACH:
HRC needs included audiovisual production, conference facilities, and voice/data infrastructure to support HRC's outreach and lobbying efforts.

QRS undertook a six-week assessment of HRC communications technologies. As part of the process, QRS conducted interviews with key HRC communications, political, education, administrative, and executive personnel. QRS inventoried existing hardware, software, telecommunication and audio/video assets. QRS' resulting Business Requirements Documents (BRD) provided HRC with a detailed outline of their needs versus their capacity, and a series of specific recommendations and options for designs and equipment to bridge the gap. All recommendations and options included budget, personnel and timeline estimates. The BRD, provided HRC with the critical information to make resource allocation decisions with a complete understanding of the short and long-term effects and benefits for their organization. Throughout the project, QRS coordinated with the architects, engineers and general contractors to ensure all base building design and construction supported the HRC's communication infrastructure goals and needs - including provisions for future growth.

RESULT:
QRS designed a broadcast quality production facility that incorporates the latest in digital video production and editing hardware and software. This facility can be managed by a single individual with minimal training, but can also accommodate larger scale productions with multiple personnel. This facility provides in-house capacity to produce satellite feeds and Satellite Media Tours (SMT), press conferences, Video News Releases (VNR), and basic video editing and dubbing. QRS also coordinated with the architects and engineers to heavy-up power and HVAC to accommodate future growth.

QRS designed an internal telecommunications infrastructure, which included a new telephone system incorporating a user interface that eliminates the need to call in a technician to do moves/adds/changes and a universal Category 6 voice/data cable plant that provides them with flexibility for desktop connectivity, future proofs their bandwidth requirements, and provides the bandwidth to broadcast video over there voice/data cabling without the added need for coax. QRS has created thousands of dollars in ongoing savings for the Human Rights Campaign in cable television service with a nominal initial investment.