Should AV support be on-site, remote, or hybrid?
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The right model depends on room count, criticality and response time requirements. Most UK corporate estates land on remote helpdesk plus on-demand dispatch for standard meeting rooms, with hybrid models reserved for flagship HQs and dedicated on-site engineers reserved for broadcast, trading floor or 50+ critical-room environments.
| Support model | What it is | Annual cost | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated on-site technician | One or more engineers permanently based at the site, 5 days a week | £45,000 to £70,000 per FTE | 50+ critical rooms, broadcast studios, trading floors, board-level rooms with no acceptable downtime |
| Remote helpdesk plus dispatch | Remote monitoring triages faults; engineer dispatched only for hardware failures. Resolves 60 to 70 per cent of faults without a site visit | £800 to £1,500 per room per year | Distributed multi-site estates, standard meeting rooms, cost-sensitive deployments |
| Hybrid (part-time on-site plus remote) | Engineer on-site 2 or 3 days a week, remote helpdesk for the rest, on-demand dispatch otherwise | £15,000 to £30,000 per year for a multi-room corporate estate | Flagship HQs (50 to 200 rooms) with mixed criticality, where a named technician matters but full-time presence is hard to justify |
When dedicated on-site wins. Sub-15-minute incident response is the load-bearing argument. Trading floors, live broadcast, government command and control rooms cannot tolerate the 2 to 4 hour SLA window that remote-first models accept. If the cost of one missed call exceeds the salary of an engineer, dedicated is the answer.
When remote-first wins. Distributed estates (a UK retailer with 200 stores, a legal firm with 12 offices) cannot economically post engineers everywhere. Remote monitoring catches most faults before users notice, and the rooms that fail get a four-hour dispatch from a regional engineering pool. Cost-per-room drops dramatically.
When hybrid fits. A 100-room HQ with a mix of standard meeting rooms, executive boardrooms and a townhall space rarely needs a full-time engineer but benefits from a named technician who knows the estate. Two days a week on-site plus remote cover for the other three is a defensible middle ground.
Strive AV designs support contracts around room criticality rather than a flat model, and rolls support into the monthly fee on AV-as-a-Service engagements.
Quick reference: dedicated on-site £45k-£70k/FTE/yr for 50+ critical rooms; remote-first £800-£1.5k/room/yr resolves 60-70% remotely; hybrid £15k-£30k/yr fits flagship HQs of 50-200 rooms.
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