University of Florida Focuses on Life Safety
As emergency towers become ubiquitous across college campuses, the focus for many campus security experts shift from presence of product to quality of product
- By Molly Walsh
- Nov 01, 2015
The University of Florida, located in Gainesville,
Fla., is one such campus that is focused on
acquiring excellent life safety products. the
oldest university in florida, UF has a 2,000-acre
campus with more than 900 buildings and over
49,000 students.
One of the campus’s current projects is the renovation and expansion
of the Rietz Student Union that prompted the discovery of several
‘dead zones’ in the outdoor notification program. The outdoor broadcasting
is part of the university’s emergency notification system,
UFAlert. This indoor and outdoor speaker network broadcasts over a
Cisco network through Singlewire’s Informacast system when an
emergency develops. The notification system also utilizes email, Twitter
and other social media networks to inform the campus community
of any type of emergency—criminal, weather, fire, etc.
Bruce Engstrom, a telecommunications project manager, has been
a part of the University of Florida for over 25 years. He is instrumental
in the installation of all emergency towers and life safety products
on campus.
Since the mid-90s UF has had a network of emergency towers. For
the last 10 years, Engstrom has focused on replacing other vendor
phones with products from Talkaphone in the emergency towers and
integrating mass notification capabilities. No mean feat as the campus
has over 200 emergency phones. But to Engstrom and team, it‘s a worthy
project. “We started moving towards the Talkaphone phones based
on the quality and reliability of the product,” states Engstrom. “Reliability
and ease of installation and use are the most important qualities
when I’m looking to install a new life safety product on campus.”
In any project like the Reitz Student Union expansion and renovation,
the campus police department is consulted and then Engstrom
springs into action—gathering quotes and insuring the install is up to
the University of Florida’s high standards. For this project it was acutely
important to find a product with the ability to broadcast to an outdoor
environment. “The Talkaphone WEBS Towers are a good way to
do that and a good way to test if we want to move to more of these
types of towers,” Engstrom points out. “And having the Cisco compliant
devices, which we had been working on with Talkaphone in previous
years, was a big selling point.”
The WEBS Towers are able to integrate into the notification system
already in place, UFAlert and Cisco Singlewire, with the added benefit of
outdoor broadcasting. Near the top of each tower are four high-powered
speakers capable of providing 360-degree coverage. A local microphone
allows emergency responders or campus security agents to make live
announcements during an emergency or for crowd control purposes.
In coordination with the WEBS Towers, the campus is also installing
VOIP-600 IP Call Stations. The high-quality speaker and microphone
components will ensure everyone in the area will receive clear
and detailed information.
A growing trend in campus safety is multidimensional products.
Emergency phones, such as the VOIP-600, are used not only as a
phone but also as a security platform. Towers, such as the WEBS Tower
can utilize mass notification, camera surveillance, be used as an access
point and more.
Having worked with Talkaphone consistently for 10 years, Engstrom
feels confident in the product. “Everything we’ve ever gotten from
Talkaphone has been a quality product,” confirms Engstrom. As one of
the newest products in the Talkaphone family, this is Engstrom’s first
experience with the VOIP-600, but he’s anxious to see how the new
product performs. “There was a learning curve for installation of the
new phone, there were a lot more components [than the analog phones
we already have],” says Engstrom. He goes on, “Talkaphone was really
supportive.” The migration to IP phones is gaining a great deal of traction
in life safety systems. The use of IP phones in lieu of analog allows
an organization to consolidate network infrastructure and leverage
software-level integration with systems such as video management systems
(VMS), access control and unified communications (UC).
The towers are in a highly exposed area of campus and will have to
endure the elements. This is a situation Engstrom has seen before.
“We’ve had some problems in the past with [another manufacturer’s]
products and the paint peeling off and rusting underneath,” explains
Engstrom. The new WEBS Towers have extremely durable, vandal
resistant exteriors to prevent any issues with destructive elements.
Being a part of the safety service on campus is immensely important
to Engstrom. He hopes that having the outdoor
broadcast towers will make the students and their
families feel more secure on campus. Engstrom
adds, “We’re really happy with the installation;
we’re really happy with the product.”
This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Security Today.