2023 Security Solutions Awards Highlight Innovation Across the Industry

Security App: Ednetics Leans on System Surveyor for School Safety Installation

Since 1997, Idaho-based integrated technology solutions company Ednetics has worked to address the challenges that K-12 schools face in acquiring and utilizing security technology.

Over the years, the organization has grown to serve the western U.S., expanding their footprint and their integrated technology portfolio to include everything from physical-security infrastructure to integrated-communications platforms, cybersecurity applications and access-control hardware.

At the heart of every project that they embark on, however, remains one key desire: the desire to help customers benefit from the application of technology to make learning environments safer and to make security systems more collaborative and effective.

When they were tasked with updating an existing security system across seven campuses within a metropolitan school district, the team at Ednetics looked to System Surveyor to simplify and streamline the process.

As a secure, cloud-based platform, System Surveyor is designed to document and centralize a school district’s physical security, IT and technology assets in one place.

Ednetics looked to System Surveyor as an all-in-one system-design tool for their team to plan, design, budget, implement and maintain the hundreds of video-surveillance, access-control, voice-services and networking-infrastructure devices that the district wanted to deploy across seven campuses.

“The trouble with our old approach was that, when we [would] return to a deployment after a year, most campus maps and device details and placements were out of date,” Hector Guzman, solutions specialist at Ednetics, says. “That meant, if we wanted to make adjustments, we would have to start from scratch.”

“We’re able to see the status of devices, initiate new installs, make adjustments and produce a finished as-built before walking off the site,” Guzman says. “The ability to share and visualize the final product with security directors and administrators has been a huge advantage.”

Long before the site survey, the Ednetics team uses System Surveyor to build out an initial drawing of each campus’ plan, add icons that indicate potential device placements and areas of coverage, and begin a working draft of each campus’ system design. This proactive step makes sure each individual site survey integrates the priorities that the customer has outlined. It also maximizes the amount of time set aside to take pictures and notes, in real time, and actively collaborate on system design.

After concluding the site survey, Ednetics can invite the customer to view the initial plan in the System Surveyor software, without having to email PDFs.

In this award-winning use case, the Ednetics team used the platform to collaborate with other team members and partners, automate a budget estimate, and produce a bill of materials over the next two or three days. That process, before they folded System Surveyor into their workflow, took up to two or three weeks.

By halving the time that it took to plan, design, budget and propose the district’s security system, System Surveyor empowered the Ednetics team to deliver accurate, fast, decision-ready proposals.

On top of this, because System Surveyor is built to give key stakeholders the ability to access the most up-to-date digital as-built quickly and securely, “everyone from facilities managers to superintendents could access and adjust details of the plan with the click of a button,” Guzman says.

“It made gathering and employing information — during a site survey and throughout that system’s lifecycle management — an absolute piece of cake,” Guzman says.

The Ednetics team praised System Surveyor for closing the gaps in communication and resource access, reducing the possibility of mismanaged emergency responses and simplifying device upkeep and lifecycle management in the long term.

“During a site survey, I can build something while I’m walking and talking, which streamlines my work onsite and makes my life so much easier,” Guzman says. “Afterward, I don’t have to worry about misplacing a document or misremembering a customer request. Everything I need is right where I need it, when I need it.”