The Pacific Northwest has experienced a surge of expansion, and like other areas with the same growth trend, there is a substantial amount of building. While many older buildings may be replaced or renovated because of this growth, there are still buildings and systems that are several decades old and may have systems and infrastructures that are coming to their end-of-life.
Failure of old building systems and services can result in lost productivity, personal injury, long-term health impacts, loss of a secure space, exposure to unsafe environments, damage to the building up to loss of life as well as the loss of the building itself. Many of the systems and sensors that monitor mechanical systems, power, building integrity and presence of water, gas and unsafe environments can be integrated with other systems for reporting. Sometimes this may be simply a contact output from legacy systems; this is still a valid interface and is often less reliant on other systems.
All of these items may be able to interface to a system that can provide centralized information, alerting and reporting capabilities. When considering what platform to utilize for this, you may already have a system that is ideal. Many systems - access control, fire alarm, mass notification, intrusion and even video surveillance - have capabilities for monitoring and reporting. They are often supplied with redundant power, supervised circuits, secured control equipment, historical reporting, have options for central reporting/graphic displays and are tested periodically.
If you have examples of leveraging your life-safety or security system for building monitoring or a need to put this in place, we look forward to hearing about you solution and any opportunities to make your buildings safer.