Drawings are the heart of the design. They illustrate the designer's concepts about how the system should relate to the building, and they illustrate the relationship of devices to

Drawings must serve five distinct types of users:

If drawings are the heart of the design, specifications are its head. Specifications generally take precedence in legal disputes. Drawings are there to illustrate the standards and practices that are required in the specifications. If you have been in your career for a long time, then you have seen some pretty bad specifications. We used to joke in our office about someday seeing a set of specifications that simply say: “Make it work real good.” Some come pretty close to that. We have seen security system specifications that are only 5 pages long. There is a lot of room there for serious mistakes by a well-meaning contractor. Many security contracting problems are the result of incomplete or wrong specifications.

With very few exceptions, most integrators I have met sincerely want to do well for their clients. It is the designer's job to provide the integrator with enough information to do well. To the extent that drawings and specifications are incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading, the contractor can make unintended errors that will be costly and aggravating to the installer, the integrator for whom he/she works, and most certainly the system's owner.

Specifications should include a description of what the project entails; descriptions of the whole integrated system and each subsystem, a description of the services the contractor will provide; and a list of acceptable products and acceptable installation, testing, acceptance, training, and warranty practices. Different specification formats prevail in different areas of the world, and occasionally these may change as building code authorities evolve in their preferences.

Security systems are unique in that they relate to more building systems than any other building system. Security systems routinely relate to

Interdiscipline Coordination makes or breaks the installation. It often determines whether a project works as intended or not, and whether the integrator makes a profit or a loss. There are many other trades working on a new construction project and the Project Manager must outline, communicate, and maintain coordination with all of these and with the main contractor at all times. Interdiscipline Coordination will generally determine whether the integrator is on time or late. Every day an integrator spends on the jobsite after his designated completion date is money removed from his profit and irretrievable respect lost from his client.

Specifying the correct products for the job can result in a wonderful system that can easily exceed the owner's expectations. The wrong products can leave the owner upset with the installer, the manufacturer, and the designer.

This is where the designer has free reign to do what is in the best interest of his client. If the designer is placed under pressure to specify one brand or another purely due to market forces, the owner will suffer. If the owner suffers, everyone suffers — the operator suffers, the maintenance tech suffers, and the integrator who has to listen to an unhappy client suffers.

Many designers express their product selection not only in their specification but also with a Bill of Quantities (BOQ). A BOQ is a spreadsheet listing all products to be used in the installation. At a minimum, the integrator's Project Manager should put together a BOQ and submit it to the designer for approval. This helps ensure that all necessary parts are included for the work.

The designer has to manage the design portion of the project. Design project management is all about delivering a design that meets the needs of the client, the integrator, and the client's project manager. The designer must do all this while working on other projects; he/she must provide the project deliverables on time and complete, and keep all parties happy. Design Project Management has four phases:

A number of things in each project need to be managed. The Project Management Institute (PMI) certifies project managers with both the Project Management Professional (PMP) and PMI certifications. The PMP certification is highly prized by everyone who knows anything much about project management. Get a PMP certification and your career as a Project Manager is assured. I highly recommend getting a PMP certification if you intend to have a career managing security projects. It will put you well out in front of others and help ensure that all your projects go well.

The PMP certification process includes the following:

Each project has three main aspects:

Although it is beyond the scope of this book to teach project management, I will state that it is an essential skill for any engineer or designer and certainly for both Design Project Managers and Installation Project Managers. I strongly recommend that the reader should invest in several books on project management and spend several weeks getting familiar with the principles. Project management is all about providing structure and planning to what seems to many to be an intuitive process. However, without the necessary structure, project management can quickly descend into crisis management, and then further simply into project chaos and damage control. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost each year by firms that entrust large projects to unqualified project managers. Your career will flourish if you have the requisite project management skills.

Client Management is the process of managing the relationship between the firm you represent and the client's representative. The most important aspect of good client management is to keep the project on scope, on schedule, and on budget. Truly, whatever else you do is of no consequence if you do not do those three things.

Managing the relationship is about understanding who are the decision makers, the influencers, and simply the opinionated. Focus on decision makers; in particular, focus on those individuals who have the authority to approve work and issue checks. Spend some personal time before or after each meeting getting to know their interests, their personality, and their character. Find out what motivates them. Find out what they do not like. Use terminology they understand and resonate with. Be short in communications, be sincere, and always end with a “cookie” — a piece of good news that indicates the project is moving forward in a manner he/she can accept.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, brings three agendas to the project:

Besides the decision makers, others on the project also have particular interests and some of those may be influencers. Get on their wrong side of an influencer and you can have someone whispering bad things about your firm into the ear of the decision makers. This can make coordination very difficult. People who dislike you on a project routinely exhibit this by introducing delays, complications, and obstacles in the way of Interdiscipline Coordination.

Client Management is by far the most complicated aspect of good Project Management, but it is far less important than managing scope, schedule, and budget. It does not matter how good you are at managing personal relationships if the project is wrong, late, and over budget. There is much more to good Client Management, but those are the basics.

I advanced the idea in the security industry of using what I call Microcontrollers. These are small, single-door controllers located above the door on the secure side to which all the devices at the door connect. The Microcontroller then connects by Ethernet to its Host Server. This approach has many advantages:

After my 2007 book Integrated Security Systems Design, Microcontrollers began to be introduced more widely into the market. (So far none have an integral digital switch.) However, there is one version of the Microcontroller that should be used carefully — the type that combines a microcontroller with a card reader all in one package. This type of product further simplifies the installation and reduces product costs, but it should only be used in relatively secure areas where users have already passed through at least one or two layers of access control. This is because if it is used on the exterior of a building (as I have seen it done), an intruder can simply smash the card reader and gain direct access to the lock power where they can open the circuit and simply enter the building. This will set off an alarm (usually only a communications alarm), but the intruder is now inside the building.

Lesson: Don't use these on exterior doors.

Frameless glass doors are beautiful, especially when used in pairs on the front of a building. But because of settling foundations, they must be installed with a small opening between the doors through which an intruder can pass a yellow notepad, warmed by placing the notepad under his arm against his chest. The pad fits easily between the doors and its warmth and movement are seen by an infrared Request-to-Exit detector above the door. When this happens, the Exit Detectors interpret this as a legitimate request to exit and signals the access control panel to unlock the door, which it does, allowing the intruder to enter.

Lesson: Use a Request-to-Exit Sensor that is adjusted to look out away from the door and place a plastic lip on one leaf of the doors to prevent insertion of a notepad.

I was once called to evaluate how a burglar had gained entry to a gold and coin dealer's shop over a weekend. The burglar had disabled the alarm system from inside the store and made off with hundreds of thousands in gold and coins. Oh, and there was no evidence of forced entry. I got the call the Monday morning after the burglary. The shop was privately owned and the intruder used an access control system to enter through the back door. No one had access cards except the owner. There were no extra cards or keys out at all. So how did he get in?

Looking around, I noticed a bathroom next to the back door. I noticed that the access panel and alarm panel were inside the bathroom and the back door was equipped with Electrified Panic Hardware. Outside the back door was a dumpster containing a small amount of trash and a broken umbrella. The inside ribs of the umbrella were all bent upward toward the top. Looking again at the back door I noticed some metal shavings on the ground just inside and outside of the door. Most uniquely, there were round metal plugs (in the form of large flat washers) in the door just below the panic bar on both the inside and outside of the door, held in place by a screw and nut.

I asked the owner when the plugs were installed and what it was for. He didn't remember ever seeing them before. As the Police were there I directed the Investigator to the umbrella and suggested he fingerprint the umbrella and the plugs, which they did. I suggested that the owner look through his video archive and look for anyone asking to use the bathroom in the last month. That is how they found the intruder, but how did he enter?

He drilled a 2" diameter hole through the door from the outside just below the panic bar. He inserted the umbrella through the hole and pressed its button, opening the umbrella. Then he pulled the umbrella back through the door which depressed the panic bar, opening the door and bypassing the security alarm. As there was no motion alarm at the back door on the inside and all the video was on the front of the building and in the shop and not in the back room or outside the back door, it was a simple effort to bypass the alarm from inside the bathroom and take all day Sunday to pilfer the store. He thought he had covered his tracks by plugging the hole. He had figured out this attack plan while using the bathroom at the shop and noticing all the details about how the physical and electronic security worked.

Lesson: Place a schedule operated motion detector focused on all exterior perimeter doors, and have a camera both inside and outside each exterior perimeter door.

Several criminal gangs have been using a device called a “frame spreader” for several years throughout the United States. I suspect this has happened in other countries as well. A frame spreader is a hydraulic ram that is inserted mid-height on the frame of a steel door (or pair of doors). The hydraulic ram is actuated and it expands by about 4 to 6 inches jamming the door frame into the adjacent walls. It achieves enough spread to release the door lock mechanism, allowing the damaged doors to be opened. This attack scenario is most common at remote warehouses with high-value assets such as computer CPU and memory chips, but it could be used on any facility.

Lesson: On high-value facilities, use multiple dead-bolt-equipped panic hardware (such as Securitech™ locks). This type of lock fits dead bolts into multiple points in the top, bottom, and sides of the frames, defeating this attack.

These are only a few innovative methods B&E (breaking and entering) criminals use to defeat security door hardware. Get together with local law enforcement and find out what has been used in your area. Be aware of the possibility of hard physical attacks on security systems. They happen all the time.

The quality of design and the quality of the installation work both have a strong bearing on how robust a system is. Poorly designed and installed systems have exposed wiring, exposed plug-in power supplies, fragile mounting of equipment, little or no shrouding of cameras, and exposed door position switches with loose wiring. The use of conduit alone instead of loose wiring creates a much more robust system. When you open an equipment cabinet, wiring should be neatly organized and well marked. There should be drawings in each cabinet to help the maintenance technician, or else he has to probe around in the wiring to figure out which wire goes to what equipment. All that probing can pull cables loose, creating another service call. All of these things create an unreliable system. If it doesn't look robust, trust me, it isn't.

The system should have redundancy such that if one component fails, another is there to take its place functionally. There are two ways to do this. First, use systems that have internal redundancy such as using equipment with redundant power supplies, redundant Ethernet connections, and redundant processing. Secondly, use the layered security approach so that if one component fails, detection occurs through another component. Remember the earlier umbrella intrusion example? A second motion detector facing the rear door inside the back room would have caught the intrusion the second the umbrella was inserted. A video camera on that area and on the outside of the back door might have helped identify the offender. This shop owner actually turned off his Digital Recorder after hours to preserve memory. He was using it to record activities in his customer area during open hours only, which was a very foolish procedure.

A good designer designs systems so they are expandable and flexible. Even when everything about the project reeks of “this is a fixed design with no chance of ever changing,” it is still best to incorporate expansion and flexibility into the design. For example, when designing a security system for my own home, I was certain of the design requirements, and those requirements could be filled by a very economical alarm system. I designed one with double that capacity. The alarm installer tried to sell me another alarm panel having just the needed capacity, which I declined. I wanted double. Within one year, things changed and I needed about half the available capacity for some unexpected changes. If I can't be sure about the future in my own home, how can any designer ever be certain about the future needs of a client. The short answer is you can't. Always design spare capacity and flexibility into the design. In almost every case, it can be done for little to nothing extra.

Please, please do not skip this section. I continue, after 35 years in this business, to find security systems that either require a PhD to operate or that are so confusingly configured that virtually no one knows what is going on in the system.

Please, do not get creative in system operation. Keep it simple. I actually have a design goal of 5 minutes of training to learn how to monitor a security console. I achieve that goal, and you can too. Still, there is plenty happening deeper in the system that you could find and operate, it is just that with only 5 minutes of training you can operate the basic monitoring functions. It is doable.

I witnessed part of the commissioning of a security system in Algeria where not a single one of the operators could read English, and the system was programmed entirely in English. That is just inexcusable. The contractor's excuse was that they should use operators that could read and speak English. Lots of luck on that in Algeria!

The idea of sustainability is relatively new to security system designers, but it should have been a primary part of design a very long time ago. All systems have a finite operating life, but you can extend that substantially through good design and good maintenance.

It is better never to design or install a system that is Late Market technology. I have sat in a conference room with product representatives who told me straight-faced that I should hurry to specify their old product line because it was going to be replaced very soon by a new line and then it would not be available anymore. Somehow they thought that was a selling point. Specify and install products that have considerable life left. Additionally, designing a robust system also helps make it sustainable.

You can sustain a system for many years by conducting good scheduled maintenance. I recommend daily checks of all field equipment. This can be done while on rounds by opening every access control door triggering every alarm and appearing on every camera. By conducting a routine guard tour and coupling it with a system operation checklist, you kill two birds with one stone. Reports each day result in either emergency maintenance needs or a device or two that must be put into the scheduled maintenance bucket. Have a certified maintenance technician visit the site at least once every month to take care of the scheduled maintenance work. Use only technicians certified by the manufacturer of the equipment so they know what they are doing.

Every access control system uses card readers and electrified door locks to create access control zones. Users need an access card to enter a zone. Each zone may have one-to-many entries and an access control zone can include one or more other access control zones. For example, the perimeter of the building may comprise a “building zone,” which encloses separate zones for each department within the building.

Most designers start by drawing card readers next to doors, but this approach almost certainly ensures the creating of “sneak paths” into access control zones. The better way is to use a colored pencil or pen and draw the boundary lines of each access area zone onto each drawing, starting with the overall site and going into each building and each floor and department. List each access area within its boundary. I like to use AutoCAD and create color-coded blocks corresponding to the access area zones. For nested zones, you can use an overall border around a group of individual access area zones.

Once you have all of the access control zones identified, then you can begin drawing locations for access control portals (access controlled doors and gates). Each access control zone may also have some doors or gates that could be used for exit, but not for entry, such as a rear fire stairwell door. Such doors may be equipped with only a door position switch and no card reader.

As you mark up doors with card reader symbols, you should also note the type of door and frame and the number of leaves. From this information you can develop a list of Door Types. When I mark up drawings, I use only two symbols: The Door Type symbol and a Card Reader. The Door Type symbol comprises one or two characters in a box next to the door and the Card Reader symbol shows where I want the card reader to be mounted (on the wall to the right or left, on the door mullion, etc.) You can do this in any way that makes sense to you. For consistency I use the following symbology (Figure 25.2):

Each door type symbol is illustrated in the physical details by its own detail (Figure 25.3) comprising, for example:

The next pass over the drawings will place alarm devices onto the drawings. Use a separate symbol for each type of alarm device and show its location on the drawing, including where it attaches to a wall or ceiling, under a desk, or other placement. I use a circle with a letter or letters within and a tag with a dot such that the dot shows the location on the plan where the device will attach to the wall. For my own symbols, ceiling-mounted devices have no tag (Figure 25.4).

Next, show locations for equipment racks, security consoles, and equipment panels. Devise a symbol for each and show the location of each on the plan. I use a separate symbol for junction boxes, terminal boxes, and equipment panels so that the installer can tell which are used where (Figure 25.5).

Finally, connect all of the devices on the drawings with conduit and boxes. Use a “tree” approach so that conduits collect into ever larger boxes as they get closer to their “home” equipment cabinet, rack, or console. Show a conduit size next to each conduit (Figure 25.6).

Observe National Electrical Code (NEC) rules on conduit fill so that you show the correct size for each conduit according to the type and quantity of cables within. Conduits can become progressively larger as they collect more and more device cables on their way to the equipment cabinet. Observe NEC rules on the maximum size of conduits for each junction or pull box. You will have to show larger pull boxes as more conduits collect and as the conduits become larger.

Finally, show power connections for powered devices. You should include a Power Schedule that lists all powered devices and for each, the electrical panel and circuit breaker that they are powered from.

Do not mix power classes within the same conduit. Show Class 1 power cables in Class 1 conduits and Class 2/3 cables within Class 2/3 conduits.

For each security device it is best to draw a physical detail that shows how you expect the installer to mount and configure the device in the field. If you want dome or enclosed cameras used, show that. If you want motion detectors to be either surface or flush wall-mounted, show that. Whatever you don't show, the installer may decide on his own what is best and neither you nor the Owner may like that. Physical details should also have notes describing required dimensions, mounting methods, and so forth.

Many designers, myself included, like to show a drawing with all of the conduits and power points in the system. This is called a Riser Diagram. For a multi-story building a Riser Diagram is normally divided into floors and on each floor is shown a main riser box and riser conduit (connecting the floors together), and from the main riser box conduits extend to the equipment panels and other terminal and junction boxes.

The Riser Diagram is also usually divided vertically to show the relationship between buildings on a campus or building zones within a building.

Finally, the Riser Diagram will show power drops, which are power connection points. All powered assemblies should be illustrated here. This is also a good place to show the panel and breaker to which each powered device connects.

Single-line Diagrams (Figure 25.7) show all of the security equipment and their circuit relationships. Show a Single-line Diagram for each system.

When you complete the Single-line Diagrams for each system you have a “biddable” set of drawings. The only additional type of drawing the installers need is Wiring Diagrams, which are not required for bidding.

Wiring Diagrams show the connections of each individual wire of each cable onto each terminal of each device. Many Wiring Diagrams can be typical; for example, all RS-485 connections are wired the same throughout the project, so you only have to show that once, not once for every panel. Similarly, you only need one Wiring Diagram for Card Readers, Door Position Switches, Motion Detectors (of a given type), and so forth.

You will need individual Wiring Diagrams for each Access Control Panel, Alarm Panel, Output Control Panel, Digital Switch, and so forth.

In lieu of Wiring Diagrams, you may want to show those relationships in Circuit or Equipment Schedules. This is a large spreadsheet that lists every field device and every attribute of that circuit. For example, an Access Control Schedule (Figure 25.8) may include the Card Reader Number, Door Type, Frame Type, Door Handing, Fire Rating, Type of Door Position Switch, Type of Exit Sensor, Type of Lock, What Access Control Panel (and port) it wires to, What Lock Power Supply, and so forth.

It sounds obvious, but the success or failure of the project largely depends on the quality of Project Planning, which should include:

Each of these elements either fits into a well laid out plan or becomes a crisis to be solved. Every crisis delays the project and destroys the reputation and relationship with the Owner, General Contractor, and other trades on the project. Equally important, every day you spend on the project beyond the scheduled completion date is a day of labor costs removed from the project's bottom line. Planning is everything.

The project schedule is the single most important document in Project Planning. Simply put, any task conducted without being on the schedule is most likely to be late. The schedule should be built from the key milestone points and then down into greater and greater detail.

The most popular type of schedule format is the Gantt Chart (Figure 25.9). A Gantt Chart shows the relationship between all the tasks, task groups and their durations, their start/finish dates, precursor tasks, and resources needed.

Start the schedule with the major task groups. Don't worry about dates just yet. The first step is just to get all the major task groups listed. Major task groups include all the points covered in this section.

After that, add a task line for each individual task under each task group. For example, the Installation task group might include a task for installing devices on each floor. You can also develop sub-task groups, for example, under the Installation task group for a small project, subgroups might include:

Each of these would then have a number of individual tasks within each subgroup.

After listing all of the tasks you can think of, go back to each task and list the time duration in hours or days that each task will take. Then list the order of precedence for the tasks. This is done by identifying for each individual task what other tasks must be completed before this task can begin. Finally, go to the top of the task list and list the start date. All the rest of the tasks will fill out their dates automatically from that based on their duration and order of sequence.

Installers need a set of Shop and Field Drawings to build from, and the Integrator needs Shop and Field Drawings on new construction projects to receive authorization from the Consultant to begin the work. Shop and Field Drawings are also often required for building permits. They also show the Consultant that the Integrator understands the project and that the Integrator is providing the necessary equipment to complete the work. For a complete list of drawings and how to put them together, read the section Implementing Design Ideas to Paper.

It seems pretty obvious that you cannot install what you have not purchased, but a surprising number of installers don't seem to place much importance on product acquisition … until they actually need the product on the jobsite. The development of Shop and Field Drawings will help you identify every single product needed for each installation.

Early identification of products and their schedule of installation is important because some products take minutes or days to acquire while some take weeks and even months. Invariably, it seems that the product with the greatest lead time for purchase is the one that is identified last.

Most of the big-ticket items will already have been identified by the Installer's sales department during bidding. But there are many products that must be identified down to their last detail after the award. After identifying the products, the next step is to identify the suppliers and place orders.

In most municipalities, permits are required for installation of electronic security systems. Permits may be required by the building department and the fire department. It is usually the responsibility of the Integrator to obtain permits. Typically, these departments want to see a set of drawings and a work plan. Be sure to allow sufficient time in the schedule between the development of Shop and Field Drawings and the beginning of construction work to obtain permits.

Your installation can be stopped dead in its tracks over and over again by other trades that you must coordinate with if you do not get well out in front of the coordination needs and deadlines early in the project. I suggest having a meeting with each or all of the other trades with which you will coordinate. Go to the meeting prepared with a folder on each trade listing what the coordination will entail, what you need from them (schedule and resources), and what you will give to them (resources). Discuss any modifications that may be required to your procurement list and theirs. Discuss schedules so that the work of both trades goes smoothly. Record any decisions reached and action items for ether trade into a set of meeting minutes. Distribute the meeting minutes to everyone at the meeting.

Follow through on the discussion to ensure that all decision points are acted upon by you and the trades (let them know that you have fulfilled your list and ask about theirs). Then give them a heads-up before any work that requires the presence of both trades together on the jobsite is done, just to be sure that they “got the memo.”

Many project delays are caused due to a jobsite that is unavailable to the installer when he is scheduled to be there. I strongly encourage each Project Manager to send out an e-mail two weeks ahead of schedule identifying the work to be accomplished in the next two weeks (day by day list) and the areas needing clearance for the installers. You should request written clearance for the next two weeks for all of the days and items on the list for the following reasons.

Certain areas, such as bank vault areas and prison areas require accompaniment by authorized users for retrofit projects. So be certain to ask in all weekly coordination request e-mails if any escort is required, and ask that the escort be introduced to you ahead of time.

Once conduits, cabling, and devices are installed and the servers and workstations, operating systems, and programs are installed, you can begin Preliminary Checks and Testing.

Steps in Preliminary Checks and Testing include:

You are now ready to begin the Final Works.

Final Works include System Commissioning, completing Punch List Items, and System Acceptance.