Electrical, Lighting & Audio-Visual Installation
A huge congratulations to all our staff involved in the St John’s Anglican Church upgrade in Launceston.
Built in 1825 St John’s was the first church built in Northern Tasmania and is one of Launceston’s oldest buildings.
The upgrade, ahead of its 200th birthday, involved the installation of new architectural lighting, theatre lighting, audio-visual equipment and under-floor heating.
Contact Group’s Northern Manager, David Irving, said it was a special project to be involved in.
“It was hugely exciting and very challenging – our team love to be involved in unique opportunities and this build definitely had lots of them,” he said.
Due to the building’s heritage listing, significant consultation with Heritage Tasmania was required.
“The Church presented a really challenging cabling approach.”
“So, the ideal solution that comes with any electrical installation is to have a great outcome visually, but not to see any of those services, so the outcome today – it’s amazing to understand where the guys have got cabling from and to,” David said.
All the conduit was hand-painted to match the existing brick and stonework.
Senior technician, Andrew Elsby, said matching the paint was very difficult and three or four colours were used, as well as countless rolls of masking tape.
“Everyone was striving for extra attention to detail, to preserve the beauty of the architecture and the historic nature of the building,” he said.
As the installation progressed, the team became fascinated in both the history and architecture of the Church.
“Some days I felt like I was Indiana Jones, crawling through tunnels, clambering up handmade ladders, disturbing thick layers of dust and finding historical trinkets.”
“It was interesting and fun,” Andrew said.
77 linear light fittings were replaced, with staff working at heights over 17 meters to install LED strip around the Church’s gothic dome.
“The height of the building was definitely a challenge, the team spent a fair bit of time in the boom lift, obviously repositioning to areas we had to access, but the outcome was definitely worthwhile,” Andrew said.
Contact Group’s Audio-Visual Manager, Andrew Otley, said the AV installation was also highly complex.
“Probably one of the most complicated parts of the installation was coming up with and engineering a mounting solution for the Martin Audio line arrays, which you can see at the rear and side of the stage area.”
“That frame was custom made in conjunction with the builder, the engineer and our technicians as well, and nothing like that has ever been done in a church like this, this is something that was custom made for this church,” he said.
He said the audio-mixing desk which they installed is considered to be one of the most cutting-edge desks in the music industry.
“The audio-mixing desk is where all the speakers are controlled from and all the different musical instruments that are connected to the stage area.”
“They’re connected via a structured CAT6 cabling system, which gives the operator full control over what they want to listen to and how they want to mix it and how they ultimately want the church to sound,” he said.
Andrew said he’s had some excellent feedback from all parties involved in the design and supply of the AV equipment.
“They commented quite regularly about how unique the installation was and how the installation worked the first time they turned it on, which is something we try to strive towards but was something in their eyes was quite unique,” he said.
Andrew thanked the team for going above and beyond to deliver the project.
“It definitely wouldn’t have come together the way it has without the team putting 100-percent into the installation, also the eye for detail that our technicians put into this one went far beyond what we’d generally expect,” he said.
Contact Group’s work on the project was recognised at the 2024 NECA Excellence Awards, with the team winning the Tasmanian Lighting Excellence Award.
David Irving said it was a well-deserved award.
“To come in and work in a building that’s over 200 years old and have an outcome that represents an amazing feat by all contractors, it is a really impressive thing for Launceston.”
“We are wrapped to have been involved and we thank the All-Saints Anglican Network and Joel Taylor from T-Built who provided us with opportunity to be involved,” he said.
We’d also like to thank and congratulate all the designers and consultants involved in the project including, 2BDesigned and GUZ BOX design + audio.
