Creating a control room layout or trading room design isn’t nearly as simple as it seems. The fact is that either room needs to be as fully prepared as possible to take on anything with a second’s notice. This requires a lot of forethought during the design phase. Failure to put a level of forethought into the process may make the room basically useless when it becomes truly necessary. Therefore, it’s best to work with a company such as Saraval Industries that designs these rooms on a regular basis.
What is a Control Room?
A control room allows any type of physically dispersed service or large physical facility to be monitored. Production control is the name of the game, and these rooms have been in general usage for approximately 100 years. As we move increasingly into a digital space, control room design has become even more important.
Control rooms are generally kept inaccessible to the public and are tightly controlled. A wall-sized display may be visible to anyone in the room. Alternatively, each worker will have a control panel and electronic display(s) at their workstation. Either way, a control room will almost always have 24/7/365 monitoring, which makes it a necessity to have multiple people on staff.
Whether your staff will continuously monitor a specific situation or will be required to take action depends on outside factors. Ensuring they’re ready to take action if needed is your most important role.
What is a Trading Room?
Using a trading room is quite different from a control room. Whereas a control room allows your workers to monitor any tricky situation, a trading room is typically used by financial markets. Essentially, a trading room serves as an area where selling and buying orders are handled.
This room is typically quite loud and will have several television screens. This enables traders to stay updated about business and the markets. There will also usually be several telephones ringing at any given time, too.
Trading rooms can be found in a wide variety of places, including investment banks and brokerages. Although they don’t spend their time watching for a situation to arise, people who are inside a trading room must remain on task at all times or risk messing something up.
How Can Companies Benefit from Design Assistance?
There are several practical applications for control room design assistance. Perhaps the most useful one, however, is that you’ll know your control room has the right design to assist your workers.
To begin, you need to decide what area of your business is going to be converted into a control room or trading floor, followed by what you hope to accomplish. Both of these factors will play a major role in the ultimate design of the room. From there, choose a company you can rely on to help you bring the room to life.
There are several different factors that will influence exactly how your specific trading floor should work. For instance, the company that assists you with building a control room has to investigate certain key parameters.
1. Define the Room
What should the room have and how should it work? This includes looking at the room’s innovation, safety, comfort, and functionality.
2. Measure What You Truly Need
This step requires a company such as Saraval to look at exactly what you need for the room to become a success. This feature is key, and it includes the system, standards, plant, project, operation, and/or building.
3. Analyze the Client’s Needs by Looking at the Existing Control Room (if applicable)
Does the client already have a control room in place? If there’s an existing control room, your designer must analyze the role each of the following plays:
- Human-Machine Interface
- Traffic Flow
- Panel(s)
- Operator Console Layout
- Furniture and Fixtures
- Current Layout of the Control Room
4. Improve Upon Existing Conditions (if applicable)
This is a major piece of the control room puzzle. After all, if they’re not improving upon existing conditions, then what is the point of going through a new control room design? They should take the basis of the layout and the room layout and improve them. We can also work on upgrades from the design concept stage.
5. Control the Final Outcome
Remaining in control of a design room layout gives Saraval the ability to present you with unique design plans. Once we’ve done this and you’ve approved them, Saraval will switch focus so that they may advise you on your next activities. This includes detailed design, construction, manufacturing, and the basic design, too.
Create Layouts That Optimize Processes
The ultimate goal of a good control room or trading floor layout is to optimize each process. For example, if you monitor two television screens but they’re not directly next to each other, this could cause a suboptimal result. Therefore, Saraval will always optimize the layout. This ensures that your control room or trading room employees can work quickly and more efficiently.
Improve Collaboration
Employees work better and provide more accurate input when they’re able to closely collaborate with each other. This also opens the door for creative solutions to common problems.
Increase Productivity
Putting your control room or trading room team into a space that improves collaboration and optimizes processes should also boost their productivity. It’s also easy to understand why giving them an ergonomically designed space – plus ergonomically designed furniture – makes it easier for them to work. So, as you can see, this creates a true win-win.
Create an Open Space that Works for Everyone
Make sure that the open space you’re using will work for everyone. Provide chairs that offer an ergonomically friendly design to prevent the fatigue and stress that accompany sitting in uncomfortable chairs. By changing just this one feature of your control room, you’ll boost productivity, improve collaboration, and optimize each process. You can also achieve fantastic results by controlling the room’s traffic patterns.
Work with a Proven Control Room Team
Designing a control room or trading room is never going to be as simplistic as it seems. To make sure you end up with a room that’s truly useful, be sure to work with one of Saraval’s experienced specialists. They will design your control room to place worker ergonomics at the forefront, which will often save you money and time in the long run. Saraval also offers our customers a responsive furniture planning solution with cable management, equipment and even heat load accommodations in mind.
Reach out to us today to learn more about how to design and build your very best control room or Trading Floor!
Sources:
https://inracks.com/the-benefits-of-investing-in-an-ergonomic-control-room-design/
https://mecart.com/blog/2021/12/08/the-importance-of-ergonomics-in-control-room design/