Healing the wounds of 9/11:SMT visits the United States

In February, Security Management Today's Editor Brian Sims and Alan Hyder - Editor of sister CMP Information journal Security Installer - travelled to California at the special invitation of CCTV solutions provider Pelco. The aim of our visit to the company's huge campus in Fresno was to find out how American ideals on security perhaps differ from those in the UK, and what lessons we might learn as a result. It was also an opportune moment for assessing how well our much-valued partners from ‘across the Pond' have coped with the aftermath of what happened in New York on September 11 2001.

Pelco's president and CEO David McDonald - a fervent supporter of President George W Bush (Pelco provided systems to cover the Republican Convention in New York last year) and former mayor of the Big Apple, Rudolph Guiliani - has done much to help salve the pain Americans continue to feel in the wake of Al-Qaeda's risible attacks on the World Trade Centre.

At Pelco's high-tech Fresno campus, for example, the California Memorial was built as a permanent monument in memory of the victims - McDonald's aptly-named "fallen heroes". A Dedication Ceremony on site in late 2001 was attended by well over 1,000 New York fire-fighters, New York Police Department officers and Port Authority police personnel who travelled across America to be there. A service has been held on campus every year since the tragedy.

McDonald can draw some solace from knowing that three of the callous terrorists who ruined so many Americans' lives on 9/11 were subsequently identified as a result of images captured by Pelco cameras.

Learning to live with 9/11

McDonald also insisted on building the California Memorial Museum in Building 3 on the Pelco campus. It is filled with gifts, photographs and memorabilia donated to the company, piece-by-piece, by those who attended the aforementioned California Memorial Dedication Ceremony on 8 December 2001.

McDonald's own office sits atop the Museum. No great surprise, really, as this fierce patriot has made it his duty to help Americans heal their wounds from that fateful day.

To tour the Museum and stand next to the California Memorial is a humbling experience. One never to be forgotten. It also serves as a poignant and prescient reminder of how vigilant we must all be if we are to prevent the cancerous spread of terror cells in the West.

In the short term, Pelco assisted at Ground Zero by providing cameras and manpower from its Orangeburg base. The company's distribution centre was transformed into a warehouse for relief supplies, and collections were instigated for families of the victims.

McDonald has since been vociferous in his desire to see New York's Twin Towers rebuilt. For him, that would be the most fitting tribute to the dead and those mentally and physically scarred. "There may be very sound practical and business reasons as to why smaller buildings would make more sense, but this is not about business practicality. It's about a nation restoring its honour." An interesting perspective.

Production techniques in focus

The first part of SMT's fact-finding tour was to complete a visit to all seven buildings on campus. The site is so vast that Pelco employs its own in-house security team, complete with patrol cars and a Control Room (again in Building 3, this time on the first floor) for monitoring images from the company's own Spectra and Esprit cameras that watch over proceedings both inside buildings and within the grounds and along the perimeter.

Interestingly, at any given time the Control Room is staffed by one officer who works an eight-hour shift before changeover. Typically, they monitor for around two hours before taking a break, which is vastly different to the regime set in the UK (where rest periods are recommended following much shorter surveillance duty times).

Cameras are also used to monitor live production and manufacturing processes in each building. Not a bad idea, and one of the contributory factors, one suspects, as to why the company had racked up 111 days without a ‘lost time' accident by the time SMT and Security Installer arrived in town.

Aside from the Stars and Stripes flags flying proudly at every turn, the other ‘constant' to be observed was the smartness of the in-house security personnel. Immaculately turned out in black shirts and trousers, complete with epaulettes, they exuded an air of corporate professionalism. Moreover, they did not disappoint in conversation, appearing totally committed to their role and knowledgeable about the discipline of security. That is the standard to which we must aspire here in the UK.

Cameras on the line

Undoubtedly, September 11 was just the beginning. If we fail to act with a permanent, ‘forever’-type of resolve, we will most certainly find ourselves facing far more cataclysmic atrocities in the future. Security failure is not an option

In Building 5, the UK Editors viewed neat assembly lines where Pelco's popular Spectra III dome was in production. Host for the factory tour, Rushan Abbas - the company's highly-educated and much-travelled international marketing liaison officer - stated that although the company doesn't sell direct to end users in the States, it runs a regular event called the Pelco Experience Programme that allows clients to visit the site and view operations conducted by America's biggest CCTV solutions provider.

"Security managers want cost-effective, next day delivery wherever they are," stressed Tony Stallings, director of worldwide logistics. "For us, logistics is a combination of forecast and demand. Not a Nobel Prize-winning assertion, I'll grant you, but it means that we need to make a best guess all the time."

Stallings is constantly evaluating the global logistics of Pelco's business. At the moment, the UK is serviced from a main distribution centre in Eindhoven, but new options are presently under discussion. "We have 24-hour repair and turnaround for all of our clients in the States, and we're immensely proud of that."

Rob Morello is the senior product sales manager for digital systems, and has a special responsibility for Endura (Pelco's solution for managers specifying in the IP arena). "Traditional customers have seen convergence coming for some time," suggested Morello. "In the US, the dot.com boom-and-bust cycle saw many unemployed IT experts taken on by security installers. They were great at IT integration, but didn't have a clue how to back-focus a camera. Installers have now trained those staff in the art of surveillance, borrowing on the IT experience to further their IP interests."

However, IT and security are not coalescing as disciplines when it comes to the management of them. "Customers are asking about shared media applications," added Morello, "but there is a reluctance to go down that route, particularly in the UK. The UK market is very conservative. Here in the US, clients are waking up. So are installers. We can no longer be conversational about IP. We need to be expectational." It may be wise to heed Morello's words. With 22 years' experience as an IT integrator, he knows what he's talking about.

Intelligent video: it's the future

The UK Editors then met with Gerrit Hurenkamp, director of regional support for Pelco's international sales operation. "By and large, security managers know how to specify a product, but it's not always the case that they know - or make an effort to know - that product inside and out," commented Hurenkamp.

Hurenkamp believes the future lies with intelligent video. The ability to monitor crowd behaviour and density in minute detail or, in the case of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), being able to recognise radiator patterns so that security teams can detect the makes and models of cars under cover of darkness, etc. "If you're talking about video motion detection, if you cannot suppress the number of false alarms then clients will refuse to use it."

Stateside, DVD players are ubiquitous in the Courts. That being the case, one wonders how the question of tampering with digital evidence has been addressed by the US judiciary?

"Most Judges have thrown out the idea that footage can be doctored. They are satisfied if the evidence is watermarked, so no matter how smart the defendant's lawyer, the guilty party is unlikely to escape harsh sentencing." Good news.

Targeting vertical markets

Pelco's product manager for digital systems is David Dalleske. For the past 17 months he's been the man with responsibility for Endura, and for scoping the IP/digital surveillance markets.

"In this country, it's apparent that end users do not want to fork-lift out all of their old surveillance systems," explained Dalleske. "Rather, they want to keep them and add new systems as a bolt-on."

Dalleske's views were endorsed by Duncan Havlin - senior manager for vertical markets - in a teleconference with the UK Editors. "We are not in the business of making ‘Me, too' products," he said. "We are talking directly to clients in the vertical markets such as transportation and retail, examining their concerns and devising bespoke solutions to suit. Security must be devised in tandem with end user needs."