7 min read · Last reviewed
Control Room & Command Centre Interiors: A Design Checklist (ISO 11064)
How command centres, NOCs, SOCs and emergency-response rooms are planned: the ISO 11064 standard, layout and sightlines, consoles, lighting, acoustics, cooling and power — and what drives the budget.
A control room is where an organisation watches something that must not fail — a city’s cameras, a network, a plant, an emergency line. Every one of India’s 100 Smart Cities now runs an integrated command and control centre (PIB, December 2024), Bengaluru’s Safe City project under the Nirbhaya Fund added a command centre at Vasant Nagar in 2023, and enterprises are building NOCs and SOCs for the same reasons. The interiors of these rooms are not office interiors with more screens.
The standard: ISO 11064
ISO 11064, Ergonomic design of control centres, is the reference most specifications cite. It is organised in seven parts:
- Principles for the design of control centres
- Principles for the arrangement of control suites
- Control room layout
- Layout and dimensions of workstations
- Displays and controls
- Environmental requirements — thermal, air quality, lighting, acoustics, vibration
- Principles for the evaluation of control centres
Its central idea is to start from the operators’ tasks — what they must see, hear, reach and communicate — and design the room around them, then evaluate the result with the people who will use it.
Checklist
Layout and sightlines
- Every operator can read the video wall without turning or craning: console makers working to ISO 11064 typically keep the wall within about 15° above the horizontal line of sight
- Supervisor position with a view of all operators and the wall
- Circulation that does not cross operators’ sightlines; a separate entry for visitors
- Room for growth — positions you will need in three years
Consoles
- Depth for the monitor count, with primary screens roughly 500–750 mm from the eye
- Generous knee space and adjustable seating for 8–12 hour shifts
- Cable management inside the console, accessible from behind
- Space and ventilation for PCs and KVM equipment
Environment
- Indirect, dimmable, glare-free lighting — no reflections on screens
- Acoustic ceiling and wall treatment so conversations do not carry; UK HSE guidance suggests alarms at least 10 dB(A) above background
- Temperature held steady around the clock — ISO 11064-aligned guides cite about 20–24 °C in winter and 23–26 °C in summer
- Fresh air for a room that is occupied every hour of the day
Services and resilience
- Raised access floor or overhead trays for the cable volume
- Redundant HVAC for the room and precision cooling for equipment rooms
- UPS and generator backup sized for the room, the wall and the equipment
- Fire detection, and clean-agent suppression where equipment rooms need it
- Access control and CCTV for the room itself
- Rest area, pantry and a shift-handover space — operators are people
Budget pointers
| Item | Indicative range (India) |
|---|---|
| Operator console, basic, per position | ₹30,000 – ₹45,000 |
| Control-room grade console, multi-bay | ₹70,000 – ₹3 lakh |
| Raised access floor | ₹260 – ₹500 / sq ft |