Key Considerations for Greenfield Workspaces, Pardeep Gill, Senior Enterprise Architect

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Who should listen: Microsoft 365 service owners, UC and AV architects, and workplace technology leads planning new offices, office refurbishments or meeting room device standards — particularly in professional services where client-dictated meeting platforms make interoperability unavoidable.

Guest: Pardeep Gill — Senior Enterprise Architect, Global legal services firm

Pardeep Gill is a Senior Enterprise Architect at a global legal firm with 25 years in technology, including 14 years at a global investment bank. He talks through the technology requirements for greenfield office builds — how IT works with architects and facilities, removing user friction from street to seat, sustainability levers in procurement and energy use, and why meeting room platform interoperability drove his device selection.

Many thanks to Luware, sponsor of this episode.

Key insights

• Building services such as AV and physical security have moved from operations-run, standalone systems to IP-based IT services, and often lack a proper service wrapper. Surveillance in particular now carries GDPR obligations — where footage is stored, retention periods and who has access — that operations teams have never had to consider. ▶ 5:38
• Design the building experience around friction points rather than technology: speed gates while carrying an umbrella and a phone, loss of signal in lifts, and finding a desk. Pardeep's team uses the phrase 'street to seat' — 4G/5G and Wi-Fi coverage throughout including the lifts, so nobody stands in reception finishing a client call. ▶ 9:41
• Mobile credentials in Apple/Android wallets can replace plastic passes and be reused consistently for speed gates, building-wide locker allocation and secure print release — with pre-ordered coffee as a further friction-remover borrowed from retail. ▶ 11:12
• Unallocated seating works but is a cultural shift in professional services. In Pardeep's own technology department you need to book a week in advance to get a seat on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday; Mondays and Fridays remain quiet. Junior staff are driving attendance back up because remote work removes learning by osmosis. ▶ 12:46
• Sustainability is now a heavily weighted, scored part of every RFP, because much of the hardware is technically comparable. Practical asks: no unwanted cables, no printed manual in every box, and no monitor stands when everything is going on arms — some suppliers will go further and ship four screens per box. ▶ 15:56
• Energy levers being investigated include Cisco's extended standby mode that drops devices to under half a watt with the NIC shut down, powering room systems off at the socket out of hours rather than leaving screens on 24x7, and Wi-Fi vendors' ability to power down APs across a floor except near entrances to cut PoE load on switches. The catch: rooms must snap back instantly when someone walks in, and some manufacturers are nervous about equipment being switched off regularly. ▶ 17:57
• AV gets engaged early on large head-office builds — acoustic engineers, softer finishes — but small refurbs overseas are still designed before IT is involved and then handed over to 'make it work'. Codec-side and cloud-side audio processing has closed much of the gap: an office boardroom with a marble table and two coffee machines became usable once background noise removal and acoustic boundary features arrived. ▶ 21:32
• After evaluating Neat, Logitech and Lenovo MTR devices, the firm chose Cisco Webex devices for consistency across platforms — accepting a slight compromise on the native Teams experience because clients dictate the platform. The firm holds Webex, Zoom and Google Meet licences and has to host on those platforms, and WebRTC guest join breaks things like HDMI ingest. Running Cisco kit leaves the option to flip to MTR mode later. ▶ 25:07

Insights summarised by AI from the episode transcript, reviewed by the Empowering.Cloud team.

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