Systems that work on the worst day.
Paging, mass notification, two-way radio and panic alerting, including the silent panic alarm Alyssa's Law requires in schools.
Emergency systems get bought once and tested never. We design them to be exercised: a notification path that reaches every space including the gym, the parking lot and the shop floor, and a panic button somebody can reach from where they are standing.
Coverage is most of the job. Indoor speakers do not carry into a gym, a gym does not carry to a parking lot, and an announcement nobody hears is the same as no announcement at all. We survey for the acoustics of the actual rooms and zone the system so a message goes only where it is needed.
Then we test it with your team, document who triggers what, and keep testing on a schedule. A system nobody has verified in two years is a system you are guessing about.
Alyssa's Law and what it requires
Alyssa's Law requires public schools to install a silent panic alarm connected directly to law enforcement, so help is dispatched without somebody first finding a phone and explaining the situation. It is on the books in a growing number of states and has been introduced in many more.
The wording matters in three specific ways. Silent, because announcing an alarm inside the room can make the situation worse. Directly connected, so the alert does not depend on an office being staffed at that moment. And reachable, which in practice means more than one trigger point and often a badge or phone app alongside the wall switches.
We design to that, and we drill it with the people who would use it. A panic button nobody has pressed in a drill is a button nobody will find under pressure.
Six systems, and most buildings need several
Paging, alerting and radio tend to get bought separately and then never talk to each other. Designed together, one trigger can drive all of them.
Paging speakers
Indoor speakers and outdoor horns, placed for the acoustics of the actual space. Outdoor coverage is the part most often left out and the part that matters when people are on a field, a lot or a loading dock.
Alert notification
Digital displays and pre-recorded messages, triggered by a panic button, not by somebody composing an announcement. In an emergency nobody should be drafting wording, so the wording is agreed in advance.
Bell systems
Schedules and tones, including the different bell patterns a building needs for regular days, half days and exam periods. Unglamorous, and the thing staff notice immediately when it drifts.
Vape and environmental sensors
Vape detection, air quality and temperature sensors that raise an alert, because a dashboard nobody opens is not monitoring. Mostly deployed in the bathrooms and plant rooms that have no cameras and no eyes on them.
Radio communication
Two-way radio over wifi and cellular, so coverage follows the network and does not stop at the edge of a repeater's range. This is how the front office, facilities and security stay on one channel during an incident.
Phone system integration
Dial codes on the phone system that page a zone or the whole site, so an announcement can be made from any handset. If your phones are on CloudVoice this is configuration, not another box on the wall.
Press, activate, notify
What happens between somebody pressing a button and help being dispatched. The point of all three steps is that none of them wait for a person to be free to explain.
- 01 Press
- 02 Activate
- 03 Notify
Somebody presses a call switch
Mounted where staff stand, even when the wiring would have been easier somewhere else. Silent by design: it does not sound in the room, because announcing an alarm to the room can make the situation considerably worse.
The building responds on its own
Display speakers show the alert, pre-recorded messages play into the zones that need them, and the paging system carries it into spaces a phone tree never reaches. Nobody has to decide what to say.
The call goes out to 911
Placed over SIP with the location attached, so responders are dispatched without anybody staying on a line to describe which building and which wing.
The sequence is only worth anything if it has been run. We drill it with your staff before handover and on a schedule afterwards.
Other services
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