The Story
Managing security across approximately 110 diverse sites presented significant challenges for the Parramatta Council. These sites include office buildings, community centers, libraries, childcare centers, aquatic centers, and sporting clubs. With over 3,500 users that include council staff and contractors, as well as many members of the public who access facilities daily, there was an obvious need for the efficiencies a single security system brings. It was also crucial that this system was reliable, as the council maintains a 24/7 security operation center to promptly handle incidents citywide. Another struggle was how to effectively manage bookings for public amenities. Alongside access control and alarm monitoring for these facilities, integrating various subsystems, such as lighting and HVAC, further complicated the security landscape.
Centralize to control the future
After a thorough review, the City of Parramatta decided to embrace a centralized Protege GX platform for their access control and alarm management. It also integrates with existing systems to provide the comprehensive security solution at scale that the council needed.
"As well as doing everything we need right now, like handle access and alarms across all locations," explains Al Salemi, "when we look at our future security systems strategy, it has all the integrations and lets us expand as required."
"Our core operation, everything we have integrates with Protege GX, that is our foundation. We integrate all of the fire alarms into the system. And in case of emergency, we're able to lock down our whole building with one click of a button. All of this feeds back into our Security Operations Center, and can be actioned or activated by them using Protege."
Eyes on for easy response
A key pillar to keep cities like Parramatta safe, is maintaining a 24/7 Security Operations Center to manage and quickly respond to incidents when they arise.
"We do everything in house so we don't outsource any security operations here at the council," says Al Salemi. This means they're looking to take advantage of any features to assist their in-house team.
"As we have over 110 sites, we can't expect all our control room operators to have first-hand knowledge everywhere. So we have visual floor plans on the Protege GX dashboard to help them to understand the layout of all the facilities."
"The operators get a pop-up telling them what has gone wrong and where. They will bring up the status and monitoring pages and have a look on the floor plan and when required they'll also pull up the video feed."
Providing operators with detailed floor plans and alarm pop-ups, and supplementing these with live CCTV feeds, allows for immediate incident response. These actions help Parramatta to stay secure and means residents can feel safe on city streets.
A better way to book
With public able to book facilities ranging from meeting rooms in Phive which houses the central library and council offices, to community centers and sports clubs, the need for effective booking management was immediately apparent.
Al Salemi and his team needed to ensure that the public could book facilities easily and securely, by synchronizing with Bookable, the city's booking system – to automate access for public users during their scheduled times.
"We use a custom integration between Bookable and Protege GX across all our hireable sites. It allows the public to book any of our sites via the Parramatta Council website and it's all automated from then," says Al Salemi. "Once Protege has accepted the booking, it generates a 6 digit PIN, and the user will get an email within 45 seconds confirming the details."
Simple system integrations
Environmental factors were a consideration too, so that amenities like lighting and air conditioning would only be active during booked times. This meant integrating various subsystems like lighting, HVAC, hot water, and more to enhance useability and increase energy efficiency in facilities.
Al Salemi explains how easy the process is for hirers, "As soon as you enter a valid credential, the doors open, the lights, air-con, and all other systems such as hot water and AV turn on."
"We've programmed things in the back end, such as allowing 15 minutes leeway on either end of the booking just to allow people to bump in or out of their events. And of course the alarms automatically arm at the end too. All of this integrates into Protege GX and is directly triggered from there."
