Simplifying control room design for end users and system integrators

Some end users and integrators are daunted by the idea of designing control rooms, but they shouldn’t be.

“It’s not difficult to design because we will help,” says Randy Smith, President of Winsted. “We will walk you through the entire process.” Some control rooms still need storage areas for consoles underneath the workspace; however, when hardware is relocated to a server room, Winsted has modern, streamlined and simplified designs with no doors or storage under the work area.

The request for a new control room can come from a consulting engineer, an integrator, or even from an end user. All Winsted sales go through the company’s integrator channel, although larger jobs tend to be specified by security engineers or consultants, who put the job out to bid with integrators. “The most important thing is for engineers to understand we are a partner for them and will walk through a project from beginning to end. We will do the design work and make sure it’s correct,” says Smith.

Designing control room furnishings

In designing control room furnishings, Winsted considers the room dimensions, number of operators, electronics to be deployed and both the day-to-day workflow of the room and how it will need to operate in an emergency. Smith says that putting in new security hardware is often the catalyst for redesigning the control room. Winsted’s free equipment layout software is available on the website, and Winsted can also provide an AutoCAD drawing of the room and proposed furnishings.

Depending on the market, another manufacturer, Evans Consoles, works with a variety of partners, dealers, integrators, and equipment providers. Most of the work they do is “brownfield” and involves retrofitting of existing facilities, says Richard Game, Chief Operating Officer of Evans Consoles.

Broad spectrum of resources

Evans Consoles personnel span a range of capabilities from architects to visualisation artists, to engineers; encompassing product design and construction management, and considering ergonomics.

This broad spectrum of resources enables Evans to provide control room furnishings in 15 different market areas – security is just one of them. As a broad-based company, they can apply lessons learned across the span of various markets; as a global company, they can consider where the technology is going on a global scale. They execute an average of more than 40 control room projects a month.

Evans seeks to engage with customers as subject matter experts in the area of control rooms; they can work at any level of engagement as needed by the customer, based on a scaled approach. For an architect concerned with the overall design of a building, for example, they can help to focus on the control room piece of the puzzle. They can work either with an integrator or an end user. “Some just want to buy the Evans products, and others want integrated services,” says Game.

AFC Industries, another manufacturer, also provides free on-site consultation to create a customer environment. The company provides free project support and design service too.

Read part 4 of our Control Rooms series here