Integration is integral to efficiency

Aug 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Gary L. Daniel

It was an unusual way to be introduced to a high rise office building's new fire and security system. In the middle of a business meeting, an authoritative, bodiless voice spoke, seemingly from the heavens above: "There is an emergency within this building. Please exit immediately." Some of the meeting's participants may have interpreted the announcement to be the voice of God, but a security specialist on site recognized it as a fire alarm, and a false alarm at that. After everyone filed out of the building, anxious about their safety and disturbed over the interruption of the meeting, they were finally notified of the reality of the so-called emergency. The company's security director, who would normally be puzzled over the malfunction, was especially upset because older systems are supposed to behave this way; not one that is brand new and properly started-up.

Where did it go wrong? Should system failures and quirks dictate your life as an owner/security director? Is yet another fine-tuning, the best option to solve your problems? Here's the reality: Security directors around the world are being pressured from all sides to bring their antiquated two-system operations kicking and screaming into the 21st century. In the old days, separate fire and security systems were the industry mainstream. Nowadays, if you're not system-integrated, you're probably spending too much money and dealing with operating delays that can affect reputation, productivity and ultimately customer and employee satisfaction.

Although the advantages of integrating the fire and security systems are easy to understand, the tendency to do things just as they have always been done usually prevents a security director or owner from taking the plunge into state-of-the-art systems integration. It is like the classic "The devil you know is better than the devil that you don't know." It is truly unfortunate that if they would employ a little consideration and forward thinking, most directors/owners would rush to get in line for upgrades.

Let me explain. Your old system is inefficient and unreliable. It produces false alarms, and in today's terms, requires too much cash outlay. It may be familiar, but the alternative new systems will provide great savings in training and logistics, and all you have to do is embrace new technology and be willing to deal with the change.

What follows should ease the pain considerably.

Training Considerable savings can be realized by minimizing training costs associated with travel, refresher courses, and upgrades. With one on-site visit, a single vendor can provide the information necessary to operate your system.

At a recent system start-up at a plant outside Denver, a traditional "old school" four-vendor, fire, security, HVAC and emergency backup power system was installed. After the start-up, the training consumed five days, $12,000, and more than 200 man-hours of effort.

A comparative study determined that a completely integrated system would have required only one vendor, $3,000 and 75 man-hours. With the integrated system, the vendor traveled to the site, and required fewer people to run the system and less time to train because one central module controls more functions, thus requiring less activity. And the "Voice of God" syndrome would never have occurred because in an integrated system, all aspects of the system would "talk" to each other and determine that what appears to be wrong really isn't.

A simple example of systems that communicate with each other is dual-detection motion technology. It consists of infrared and microwave motion sensors that require separate confirmation of anomalies before an alarm notification is sent. In other words, just because the infrared is in an alarm state does not mean that something has gone wrong within your building. For an alarm to sound, microwave confirmation must also occur. Once the central "brain" of your system receives alarms from both systems, then - and only then - is a real alarm sounded. It's called "system redundancy," and it replaces the wasted "function redundancy" in the old system, where two or three system aspects all do the same thing, with no advantage to the system. When two systems are able to work together, you get a more reliable, mistake-free environment.

Logistics Logistics is space, material and time. The old system, in today's technology, is a logistical nightmare - cable running everywhere, redundant functions, an inability to find outdated replacement components, the list goes on and on.

It all comes down to materials management. Material dictates space and time, and ultimately is the biggest factor in logistical savings. Within an integrated system, materials usually consist of consoles, panels, and peripheral field equipment such as smoke detectors, access control devices, interface modules, etc. The difference with an integrated system is that material quantities are significantly reduced, allowing great savings over the life of your system.

When you consider the system start-up outside of Denver, they were dealing with a system that occupied multiple equipment racks, miles of cable, and excessive hours to maintain. A better plan would have produced a user-friendly system that took up half the equipment space, one third the amount of cabling and one quarter the number of man-hours to maintain.

The advantages of reduced quantities includes less space required to mount and store equipment, fewer spare parts to pile up, and fewer man-hours required to keep track of the whole thing. The associated savings are obvious.

Security professionals, from designers to directors to owners, should consider the integration of two systems that have been separate from the beginning of time. Just because it's familiar doesn't make it right. Bringing these two systems together, while not physically difficult, can still be painful if we have the tendency to resist change. But by looking forward, not backward, we can ease the pain of jumping into the 21st century. We will ultimately reward ourselves, and those around us, with a safety/security product that will provide reliability, reduced cost and most importantly, peace of mind.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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