VT Communications (VTC), in partnership with the BBC World Service, has won the Team of the Year — Professional and Support Services award at the BBC Global Reith Awards.
These internal awards celebrate excellence, innovation and creativity across BBC Global News. Sir David Attenborough presented the award at a ceremony in London on 11 March.
The VTC–BBC WS partnership was lauded for its re-engineering of the BBC World Service control room and establishing a new network operations center (NOC). This was the first time an external supplier has won an award at the event.
Mike Cronk, director of BBC World Service, described the project as “the largest re-engineering of the BBC Control Room in 15 years.”
Throughout 2008, the companies worked together to implement the technological, operational and structural changes required. Despite the physical disruption, service availability reached its highest-ever level — never less than 99.99 percent.
The BBC NOC is now jointly staffed by a team of dedicated BBC duty operations managers with round-the-clock support from highly-trained VTC operational and broadcast support teams.