Streamlined Communication Across Multiple Sites for a Municipal Leisure Organization

Municipal facilities have a communication challenge that doesn't always get talked about: they run on rotating shifts, serve the public daily, and rely on teams that rarely sit at a desk. Lifeguards, swim instructors, and front-desk staff move around. They don't check email between classes. They don't scroll bulletin boards on their way to the pool deck. And yet they need to know exactly what's happening, who's on shift, what's cancelled, which lane is closed for maintenance, and whether the weather is about to change the day's plan.
The Municipality of Leiden came to Castit looking for a partner to offer a better way to keep two of its public swimming pools aligned. What they needed was not complicated in principle, but it had to work reliably, scale easily, and be manageable from one place. This is how that project came together.

About the Client

The Municipality of Leiden is a city government in the western Netherlands, serving a population of roughly 127,000 residents in the province of South Holland. Leiden is known for its historic university, its canals, and a strong civic tradition of well-maintained public services. Among those services, the municipality operates several public recreational facilities, including two swimming pools that together welcome hundreds of residents every week for lane swimming, swimming lessons, recreational swimming, and club activities like waterpolo.

Running two swimming facilities on behalf of the public is an operationally demanding job. Staff schedules rotate throughout the week. Swimming classes run on tight timetables. Pool chemistry, lane assignments, and routine maintenance all need to be coordinated behind the scenes, and the people doing that coordinating are spread across two sites rather than gathered under one roof. Keeping everyone on the same page, pool managers, instructors, lifeguards, and reception staff, is a daily task, not a weekly one.
 

The Challenges

Before implementing digital signage, the municipality relied on the familiar combination of printed notices on staff bulletin boards and emails to rotating staff accounts. It functioned, but it rarely functioned well. Emails went unread by staff who spent most of their shift on the pool deck. Printed schedules went out of date the moment a shift changed hands. And because each pool was updating its own board on its own timing, information was inconsistent between the two locations. Several specific problems kept surfacing:

• Decentralized communication between the two pool sites made it hard for facility managers to guarantee that every staff member, at every location, was seeing the same up-to-date information.
• Schedule visibility was limited, so staff sometimes arrived without a clear view of the day's lesson timetable, lane bookings, or personnel assignments.
• Real-time updates about last-minute absences or facility adjustments were slow to reach the people who needed them most.
• Remote management wasn't possible, which meant someone had to physically update each site rather than push changes from a central system.
• Future scalability was a concern, because the municipality wanted the option to extend the same system to additional facilities without rebuilding it from scratch.

Beyond staff coordination, there were environmental factors too. Weather conditions affect outdoor pool operations and certain programs, and without a way to surface that information quickly on-site, decisions about operations took longer than they should.

* Digital signage running on informational display showing waterpolo clinic event info

The Castit Solution

After a discovery conversation focused on what the facilities actually needed, rather than on which product to sell, Castit deployed an enterprise-level digital signage solution across both swimming pools.

• Hardware. Two commercial-grade digital displays were installed in the staff rooms of the swimming facilities, paired with secure network-connected media players built for continuous operation. Mounting was chosen to suit the humid, high-traffic environment of a pool facility.
• Software. The system runs on Castit's cloud-based content management platform, with centralized multi-location control and role-based access so different managers can update different content without stepping on each other. Automated scheduling aligns content with facility operating hours, and the platform's reliability keeps critical communications available when staff walk in for their shift.
• Content. The screens pull together everything the staff needs at a glance: dynamic schedule templates with color-coding for different roles, real-time staff absence notifications, a weather application feeding into pool-operation decisions, a news ticker for municipality-wide announcements, and a swimming class calendar that updates automatically. Visitor-facing information, like waterpolo clinic announcements, can also be pushed onto displays in public areas of the facility when relevant.

All of this is managed remotely. A facility manager can update both pools at once, from any device with an internet connection, and see the changes go live in seconds.

* Informational screen with a weekly schedule running on the screen in the swimming area 

The Results and Impact

Since rolling out Castit across the two pools, the municipality has seen a clear shift in how information moves through its swimming facilities.

Better Staff Awareness

Faster Response

Less Admin Time

Consistent Across Sites

• Staff awareness has improved noticeably. Lifeguards and instructors now see the day's schedule, any absence updates, and relevant announcements the moment they enter the staff room. The facility manager reports a reduction in schedule-related questions, which in turn frees up supervisor time for actual supervision.
• Operations are more responsive. When someone calls in sick, a manager can push the update to both locations in seconds, making coverage arrangements faster and reducing the risk of understaffing at opening time. Weather-related adjustments and emergency protocols move through the same channel, which has strengthened day-to-day safety and operational readiness.
• Administrative time has dropped sharply. The previous routine of walking physical bulletin boards at two sites through weekly updates used to consume hours. With the digital system, that work takes minutes, content is created once, published centrally, and mirrored to both locations without anyone printing, pinning, or driving between facilities.
• Consistency across sites is no longer an open question. Both pools now communicate through a single recognizable layout, so whether a staff member is working in one facility or covering a shift at the other, the information looks and behaves the same way.

The municipality is already planning to extend the system to a third swimming location. Because the Castit platform is designed to scale, expansion means adding hardware at the new site and connecting it to the existing content management infrastructure, not rebuilding anything.

Digital Signage Works for Municipal Facilities

Leiden's experience points to a broader pattern: digital signage is not only for retailers and corporate offices. Any municipal operation with multiple sites, rotating staff, and a steady flow of public visitors stands to gain from the same approach. Swimming pools, sports halls, libraries, community centers, and civic buildings all deal with the same core problem, keeping people informed in spaces where email and printed notices don't reach them well.

For municipalities in particular, the value is in the efficiency. The system is set up once, managed centrally, and it runs. Staff get the information they need at the moments they need it. Residents in waiting areas see relevant updates and announcements. Managers spend less time on administrative maintenance and more time running their facilities.

If your municipality or public organization is facing the same challenges Leiden did, scattered communications, outdated printed materials, or inconsistent messaging across sites, Castit is worth exploring. The platform is built to scale, easy to manage without specialist knowledge, and designed around the realities of public-facing operations. Visit Castit to learn more, or reach out to the Castit team directly to talk through what a setup would look like for your organization. 

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