Ensuring that your building is both secure and safe is essential for its chances of long-term success. Security is often most heavily considered when a building is first being planned. Still, it’s important to revisit your security plans each year to ensure that the technology in place continues to create a safe, low-risk atmosphere.
What are you doing to create and update your building’s security plans for 2022? Review the following to ensure that you don’t miss out on any key segments as you finalize your approach to safety in the new year.
Review The Four Foundations
There are four foundations to all good building design. Using the four foundations as a baseline when reviewing your building plans in 2022 will ensure that you are not missing any primary protection features.
1. Fire Protection Plans
Your building needs to be up-to-code and fully protected from fire. Fire protection should include ensuring that the building itself has the right materials in place and that the fire safety system is functioning properly to respond to any fire threats.
2. Health and Safety of Occupants
Next, ensure that your building mitigates the risk of injury or illness caused by disruptive or unsafe building design. Preventative measures are essential, and the following should be considered in your design plans:
- Fall and accident prevention
- Electrical safety
- Indoor air quality
3. Environmental Mitigation
While you cannot control natural disasters, you can ensure that your building has the necessary hazard protections in place to mitigate any risk of damage caused by tornados, earthquakes, floods, and other natural occurrences.
4. Security For Both Occupants and Assets
Finally, review the focus of today’s work: your security plans. It’s critical that your building is outfitted to ensure the safety of both the building’s occupants and the assets held inside the building at any time.
Each building will have different needs in this respect, but your security plans cannot be left unreviewed.
Stay Secure Yet Accessible
All occupants should feel secure while inside the building, but they should not have to struggle with a complicated key system to enter the building. Reviewing the setup for your commercial building, apartment block, or office access control system can help to ensure the right balance of security and accessibility.
Your updated 2022 access control system will be split between technical, physical, and operational changes. Get creative with how you approach security issues, and prioritize the type of approach that suits your building type, location, and needs.
Insert Automation Where It Matters
If your security plans for 2022 do not yet include some automation features, it’s time to consider whether investing in some building automation will benefit you. For example, building management automation for alarms and fire hazards can be a great way to ensure swift emergency responses in any situation.
On another front, you might need to consider how automation can help with access control. Finding the right technology to suit your building’s access needs if managing a hybrid work model or changing tenants is vital. You might find that adding automation that permits certain types of crucial access will help reduce the time spent managing the system.
Overall, review automation for your security plans for all of the following:
- Lighting control
- Security cameras
- Mechanical entrance systems
- Electrical power and control
- HVAC systems
- Building access
By prioritizing automation in your building, you can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and ensure the comfort of your building’s occupants.
Don’t Forget To Consider Analytics
Video security, building access systems, and other building control systems generate a large amount of data that can be used for security analytics. Finding vulnerabilities in your security system and places where you are spending more than necessary is possible by reviewing this information on an annual or bi-annual basis.
Security is about more than just reacting to problems; it’s also about being proactive towards future potential issues. Analytics are key to that process.
Protecting Your Security
Finally, ensure that your plans for 2022 continue to protect the physical assets essential to your security system. Your technology relies on physical components, such as video cameras, to function correctly.
How are your physical assets on the ground at the building being protected? If your plans do not already account for this type of protection, it’s time to make adjustments.
