Keeping Everyone Safe
Keeping your employees and contractors safe and out of harm’s way is a number one priority. Working safely is the goal, but when something does go wrong you want to be in control and be accountable for all those working at your site. It’s not just a compliance issue, it is common sense.
“We want to account for everyone as quickly as possible, but more importantly we want to know immediately who is not accounted for.”
A chemical company in Texas took the next steps to creating a safer industrial work place for all onsite personnel.
I²oT Solutions personnel were brought in to engineer the site to support perimeter Video Surveillance along with a mustering solution.
Our objective was to extend the existing wireless infrastructure throughout the remaining edges of the plant, deploy and integrate the mustering solution into their current Access Control System and establish perimeter cameras on the boundaries of the site.
Solution
I²oT Solutions team of experienced engineers performed a detailed site engineering design to establish best connectivity methods for 16 outdoor assembly stations, 70 Shelter-in-Place (SIP) readers and over 20 perimeter cameras. Everything supported by a robust network topology leveraging both the wired and wireless network infrastructure (including WiMAX technology for full boundary extensibility). In addition, the site is leveraging a centralized dashboard to support incident management for personnel accountability as well as video surveillance feeds.
Overcoming Obstacles
Deployments always have challenges and considerations to be addressed, which included:
· Ensuring the most cost-effective means to install and connect both solutions.
o Limit high-cost construction activities like excavating, and big machinery costs.
· Build a solution with high level of redundancy and performance without compromising already existing performance baselines.
· As always, working safely and collaboratively with other contractors and employees.
What sets us up for success and is our extensive experience of working on an industrial site, knowing the first priority is working safely and collaboratively as we perform our activities. In addition, we worked closely with site personnel with knowledge of the area we are working to ensure our design will meet the current and future needs.
Results and Return
The engineering was successfully completed and the solution was successfully deployed on time and within budget. In addition, by leveraging the wireless infrastructure, the site construction costs were drastically reduced by avoiding the high expense (5 X the cost) of running fiber optic cabling to extend the network to outer perimeters.
The chemical site not only meets the DHS and MARSEC Security compliance; they have instituted a higher level of security making the site a safer place to work at.