“In our shipping area we needed tighter control but it had to be a system that allowed us to have ready access. We installed an automatic gate with a video feed back to the shipping office and it’s allowed for convenient use of that system,” says Gossen.

Now, when a truck arrives at the plant there are several additional controls in place to secure the loading area.


When a truck driver approaches the pedestal at the entry gate he is instructed to push the call button to the shipper/receiver (if he doesn't have an access control card) and the phone in the shipping office rings. If the shipper is there he can view the monitor to see who is at the gate and allow entry. If no one is in the office after five rings it dials one of the wireless phones on the floor. If the shipper is on the forklift he can confirm who is at the gate, hit the star button and activate the gate to allow entry. The gate takes about five seconds to open and as the truck rolls through and activates the close loop as the gate closes.


The Viking auto dialer is also a push-to-talk model due to the
noisy diesel truck motors interfering with the automatic microphone pickup on the unit.


“We also made sure that the gate automatically opens upon a fire alarm,” says McCann.


Bulldog also upgraded the video surveillance system and DVR’s and integrated them with software at both plants in Guelph. The previous camera system was upgraded to a Pelco system and two years ago.

At the first plant, Sleeman had a combination of different cameras (in place recording on a proprietary recording unit.

“We upgraded all of the outdoor cameras to Pelco IS110DW-V9 dome cameras and all of the indoor cameras to IS90CH-V9. We ended
up adding 11 more new cameras throughout the facility and we wired them with CAT5 in the event they wanted to upgrade to IP cameras in the future. The Keyscan DVR's were not available then so we used the Pelco DX8124. We had installed a lot of these units for other customers and found they were the best and most reliable unit on the market at the time,” he says.

At the second plant, Bulldog upgraded all of their existing cameras except for about five, repositioned some and replaced the proprietary DVR to a Pelco the same as at the first plant.

“The CCTV system was integrated with the access control system we eventually put in which was Keyscan Vantage and the Maxsys security system from DSC completed the security portion of that — three systems meshed together providing the solution to fulfill their needs,” says McCann. “So you’re doing so many things with different product lines but all married together and if one system is out of commission the others are working.”
 
McCann says there was a lot of customization done to fulfill what Gossen was looking to put in place. “We did some unique things — we went to Keyscan and they wrote software and made changes to make the system user friendly with drill-down maps so whether you’re head of security or in maintenance you could with little instruction learn to navigate and make it user friendly.

“We needed the ability to change the status of the security system to get one system to talk to another and it really turned out very well,” he says.

McCann says the key to doing business today, in his mind, is being flexible to customer needs and really understanding what it is they want to achieve — especially so with companies operating in different location with different needs.

“Security is always evolving and changing and every security system is different. We have to be service oriented and we can extend that through our dealer network,” he says.