The completion of Exchange Square in October last year marked the largest contract to date for systems integrators Westec Electronics.
The contract value estimated at just under R6 million was signed in October of 1999 and a deadline of a year given. Exchange Square, situated across from Village Walk in Sandton, is known to many as the newest economic hub of the country. It consists of three buildings: The JSE Securities Exchange, ABN Amro and the Deutsche Bank. The JSE was the first building tackled, closely followed by the smaller, mirrored twin buildings.
The project started fairly relaxed but towards completion demanded a high level of expertise, said Martyn Willliams, Director of Westec Electronics.
As systems integrators Westec Electronics were responsible for the design and installation of the equipment and subsystems. "The core monitoring and graphics display is provided by the videoweb software; this in turn receives on-line information from the access control, fire alarm and building monitoring systems", explains Williams.
"The videoweb user interface also automatically controls the operation of the Closed Circuit TV system to provide on-screen video surveillance of all the occurrences and reactions and all CCTV camera views are digitally recorded at a rate of 3,7 frames per second, leaving nothing to the imagination."
Equipment used included smoke detection/evacuation, gas extinguishing, building alarm monitoring and access control: turnstiles, swing arms and traffic barriers. For this the newly developed improNet and ImproX hardware systems were used. "This is a world first in using steel readers. It is a patented concept which has rendered the use of access control more reliable, flexible and less vulnerable to tampering," said Williams.
The Impro technologies system used was in conjunction with windows 98 and both the ImproNet Access module and building management module were employed. This allowed for general building monitoring as well as detailed monitoring of specific essentials such as computer room environment and back-up services. "The emphasis is on fire safety and security. We have maximised this by interfacing lift control and staircase pressurisation fans as well as creating localised smoke extraction," said Williams.
"The chief advantage of this type of system integration is to take some of the strain from the operator, who, in an emergency situation may not be aware of the most effective reaction procedure," he explained.
"The preprogrammed approach can be more clearly defined beforehand and can include text instructions on the computer monitor as well as verbal commands generated in wavefiles."
According to Consulting Engineer Mr Patrick Campbell of Chorn Kirtland Riccardi: "The system is working well. The Westec team proved themselves more than capable at Exchange Square."
For further details contact Westec Electronics on tel: (011) 943 2126.
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