As a reflection of their growth in the U.S., Bank of China left behind their home on the east side to plant roots near one of the city’s most iconic landscapes at 7 Bryant Park. Cerami was engaged to provide full information technology, audiovisual, acoustical, and physical security design and migration support for Bank of China New York’s relocation. This project boasts 16 floors of offices, employee amenities, trading floor, meeting and training center, conference floor, data center and ground floor retail. Cerami also was the base building acoustical consultant.

Signature Solution: We provided acoustical design criteria that promotes and supports speech intelligibility, acoustical privacy, and comfort in the various components of the project. We made recommendations for each space and the required acoustically absorptive materials to control reverberation.

Our technology responsibilities include carrier/service provider facilities, data center, cabling infrastructure, wireless network design, as well as audiovisual solutions for the retail bank branch, all workplace areas, and specialty spaces including trading floor, training and collaboration rooms, conference rooms, boardroom, and multi-purpose conference center.

In addition, we provided specialty trading systems technology consulting including trading turret solution design, market information consulting services, and integration with non-trading enterprise technology platforms. We also ensured the successful deployment of all trading and non-trading technology systems for the new site and led the migration of systems from existing locations to the new location.

Cerami began consulting with this Financial Service Company on technology, security, AV and acoustic needs for their satellite office in Atlanta a decade ago. Having gained an intimate knowledge of their workflow and strategic needs, most notably their desire for seamless connectivity – in conference rooms, offices, homes, or cell phones – Cerami created an iterative model that could then be scaled.

With careful consideration of their desire to strategically focus on technology and AV where it directly engages their employees, six projects followed, including, Plano, Texas, Washington, DC, Chicago, Illinois and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and most recently, a much-heralded Reston, Virginia location. While there are commonalities, designed for resilience without redundancies, each building has a raison d’etre – a town hall, a trading floor, and expanded conference center. Future proofing and making sure that each of the seven locations could take over, should a disruption occur anywhere in the system, is the definition of being future proof.

Signature Solution: A focal point at this office building is their interactive AV wall, which captures multiple streams of communication; Twitter feed, FB feed, internal coms, live TV, Scrolling HR, and a live feed from their trading floor. Cerami designed these video walls in partnership with the Financial Service Company’s marketing and technology departments bringing the most current display technologies to drive collaboration.

A continuous humming noise was impacting the trading floor for a major financial firm. The humming noise caused many complaints and led to temporary relocation of staff to avoid exposure to the sound.

Signature Solution: Cerami’s Site Assessment team located the problem. A major mechanical floor of the building was adjacent to the floor impacted by the noise. The droning noise was determined to be due to vibration from large pumps. Because of the complexity and configuration of the mechanical room and equipment, Cerami determined that it would be extremely difficult to pinpoint and resolve all potential sources of vibration transfer into the structure. As an alternative, Cerami recommended that VFD’s (Variable Frequency Drives) be implemented to reduce pump operational speeds during most conditions, ultimately reducing noise exposure. The issue is now resolved, and the floor is fully occupied with no complaints.