Australian Capital Territory Law Courts

The upgrade and development of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) heritage-listed Supreme Court included 6 new courtrooms, chambers, library, jury facilities and an overhaul of the e-court environment, including a dedicated remote witness zone with seven video conference suites.

The ACT Law Courts required a system which would serve the current operational requirements and be scalable to handle future demand. Integral Group worked closely with Programmed Electrical Technologies (PET) to implement a state-of-the-art environment. In consultation with key stakeholders, and by using modelling technologies, testing was conducted in both virtual and physical realities, ensuring that the short-listed equipment was up to the task. The modelling and bench-testing exercises included speech intelligibility of court loudspeaker, user control interface and page structure, visual sightlines between participants and technology and robustness of next-generation AV-over-IP signal distribution platforms, to deliver maximum flexibility and adaptability for the future.

The design of the remote witness annotation system allows vulnerable witnesses to still have all the technical functionality available as if they were sitting in the courtroom, from the safety of the remote witness rooms, a first in Australia.