As emergency events continue to unfold across the country, the rapid demand for campus- and building-wide paging systems is turning paging and mass notification systems into a requirement vs. a luxury.
And NSCA member Biamp says that now is the time to determine whether your clients’ safety and security contingency plans have holes. These gaps often remain hidden until an intelligible communication pathway is needed – and then you may find that the client has no way to broadcast intelligible audio announcements with directions about where to go and what to do during an emergency.
To prove its point, Biamp offers this real-life example: A systems integrator in the Washington, DC, area visited a local company’s facility recently. When the topic of paging systems came up, the company’s facility manager said that paging systems weren’t necessary because the company never made building-wide pages.
Fast-forward to a few weeks later, where there was a sizeable earthquake in this part of the country. The company’s CEO quickly realized that there were no directions in the contingency plan regarding what to do in an event like this. So she decided she was going to make an announcement to provide everyone in the building with safety directions. But panic set in when she realized that the building wasn’t equipped with a paging system for building-wide notification.
This turn of events convinced the CEO that the building did, in fact, need paging capability. As integrators, if we can help our customers think about situations like these before they occur, and describe what may happen if they’re not prepared, we can help them avoid situations like this one.
To read the entire story, as well as learn more about building- and campus-wide paging systems, click here.