BCIT Updates Intercom System With Pliant Technologies’ CrewCom

Pliant Technologies’ CrewCom Digital Wireless Intercom was the clear choice when British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) was looking to replace an outdated wired intercom system.

Renowned for its esteemed broadcast-focused curriculum, BCIT teaches broadcast journalism, television production, and video production, providing students with hands-on educational experiences within its multiple production studios. With Pliant’s CrewCom intercom, students can now experience a cutting edge, modernized communications solution, providing an invaluable skillset to prepare students for a professional broadcast career.

When upgrading from a wired intercom to a digital, wireless solution, BCIT needed a system that would provide enough coverage for clear communication throughout the entire building, while also being able to have coverage across the building’s two floors. In addition to coverage requirements, BCIT’s broadcast program was also looking for a solution with a 900MHz frequency to avoid interference with pre-existing Wi-Fi infrastructures within the campus.

To ensure the institute was upgrading to the best solution for its specific needs, Kal Ng, broadcast engineer at BCIT, turned to Vidcom, an international systems integrator of high-end broadcast, streaming and post-production solutions. With Vidcom’s guidance and expertise, the institute acquired two identical CrewCom systems for its two main production studios, each of which consists of one Control Unit (CU), 18 Radio Packs (RP) and four Radio Transceivers (RT).

Unique to this school’s needs, they were also looking for a solution that could be moved to different locations, depending on what story the students were capturing. “As a teaching environment, BCIT requires an intercom solution that could be deployed in different parts of the campus, or anywhere in greater Vancouver BC, depending on the show’s content that day,” says Ng. “With CrewCom, we were able to set up a mobile unit, with all of the gear in a rack with wheels for portability. Students can transport the mobile unit to wherever they need. With CrewCom being a wireless system, all they need to do is hook up the antennas, fire up the system’s radio packs, and they’re good to go.”

Another benefit of CrewCom for BCIT’s broadcast program is its ease-of-use and ability to interface with wired systems. This allows BCIT to connect CrewCom to the one-way communication IFB system that the journalism students deploy. “Our journalism students wear an IFB earpiece for programming cues, so they are able to listen to the director and producer’s cues, without the need to communicate back to them. With CrewCom having a wired interface capability, we can connect the journalists’ IFBs, so they never miss a cue. Additionally, CrewCom is super straight forward and simple-to-use, so there’s a very small learning curve for the students. Overall, CrewCom has done a phenomenal job of meeting all the school’s requirements, and I couldn’t be happier with our decision to choose Pliant.” 

You might also like...

Audio At NAB 2025

Key audio themes at NAB 2025 remain persistently familiar – remote workflows, distributed teams, and ultra-efficiency… and of course AI. These themes have been around for a long time now but the audio community always seems to find very new ways of del…

Production Control Room Tools At NAB 2025

We return to the high pressure world of the Production Control Room where Switchers, Replay and Graphics are always at the heart of the action. The 2025 NAB Show will bring a myriad of new feature releases and opportunities for hands-on…

Remote Contribution At NAB 2025

The technology required to get high quality content from the venue to the viewer for live sports production remains an area of intense research and development, so there will be plenty of innovation and expertise in this area on the…

KVM & Multiviewer Systems At NAB 2025

It’s NAB time again. Once again, as we head towards the show, we will take a look at the key product announcements across a range of key technology and workflow areas. We begin with the always critical world of K…

Sports Production Infrastructure – Where’s The Compute?

The evolution of IP based production and increased computer processing power have enabled new workflows, so how is compute resource being deployed to create new remote and hybrid approaches?