Security in Practice at The Security Event Birmingham

Jan Meiswinkel, CEO at Advancis, was part of The Security in Practice Theatre at The Security Event in Birmingham. The experts in discussion were John Davies (TDSI), Andrew Sieradzki (Buro Happold) as well as Neil Bennett (Partner-Farrells). The panel analysed how to add value with integrated security from concept to commission and explored the impact of technology developments alongside effective assessment of security requirements.

Advancis, manufacturer of the vendor-neutral PSIM platform WinGuard, is aware that there are always two groups to be considered: on the one hand, there is the end customer, but on the other hand also the integrator/installer. BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a good keyword, as it can be used for detailed planning before implementation of a PSIM system, so that all the subsystem installations and their processes are well-prepared during the planning phase and can then, in the operation phase, be automatically taken over into the PSIM platform, e.g. by autoprojection. The integrator is as important as the end user of the PSIM system. Currently, the integration processes take a lot of time and the staff realising them has to be very well-trained. Target is to simplify and thus shorten the integration time by automatising more and more steps of the installation process.

The integration of lots of sensors and the related data management and evaluation for predictable events is a challenge, but also a chance to improve processes and performance. KPIs can be set and adapted individually for each customer. Furthermore, the collected data can also be used for predictive maintenance and to predict incidents. It is required to inform and train users on the collection, maintenance and evaluation of these data and how they can use it to optimise their internal processes.