LUBBOCK, Texas, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Control Technologies has installed video monitoring and access control to enhance security at 32 remote substations and other sites across west Texas for the South Plains Electric Cooperative (SPEC), a fast-growing regional electric cooperative. Based in Lubbock, Control Technologies is the largest independent building management systems supplier in West Texas and a member of the InsideIQ Building Automation Alliance, an international alliance of independent building automation contractors.
SPEC decided to take proactive steps to upgrade security because electric utilities are under increasing regulatory pressure to increase their physical security in order to reduce vulnerability to physical attacks and threats. SPEC turned to Control Technologies for a solution to better secure its 32 substations, seven offices and a radio communications tower site located across 6,600 square miles of Texas.
"We recommended an enterprise-grade, open platform security system that would unify all of SPEC's physical security requirements, including video surveillance and access control, as well as manage potential alarms triggered by their perimeter intrusion system," said Scott Cheatham, security executive of Control Technologies. "We performed a thorough critical infrastructure protection regulatory compliance assessment, evaluated different manufacturers, and advised SPEC on the best option for their specific circumstances. Only when that was finished did we install and complete the systems integration."
"SPEC's extensive coverage area includes more than 52,000 electric meters throughout West Texas, but until recently, we only had a very basic analog VMS system and access to our substations was still key-based," said SPEC's network and systems administrator Tim Warren. "We needed a new security system to provide visual feedback of all our facilities at any time and let us know who has accessed what area and when. Now, we are now able to monitor more than 190 cameras and over 200 access control-enabled doors from either our central operations center in Lubbock or from mobile devices."
"Customers in a range of industries rely on the advice of their local InsideIQ member firm because our members are independent and manufacturer neutral," said Leroy Walden, president of the InsideIQ Building Automation Alliance and vice president of Atlanta-based McKenney's Inc. "This means an InsideIQ firm will listen to the customer, evaluate the technologies that are available and recommend the product that will best meet the customer's exact needs."
Logo - https://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151027/281107LOGO
SOURCE InsideIQ Building Automation Alliance
Share this article