Site Surveys – Planning for Your Customer
Most of us have heard the old saying “Prior planning prevents poor performance” and nowhere is it more important than planning out a Video Surveillance System & Access Control System. Taking time upfront to make sure your survey is complete and accurate will save great amounts of time, money and energy for your installers, making both you and the customers bottom line better.
Making the sale and picking the right product are only parts of the puzzle. Camera placement, lens selection, mounting options and cable planning are all equally important to the success of a job. These elements will also help you gain the loyalty of your customer. If you’re a salesman, project manager or an estimator, at some point you’re going to have to put a project together and it will help if you know what to look for.
Of all the various parts of a CCTV system & Access Control System, the one thing the customer is going to notice above all else is a picture that doesn’t meet his expectations. He won’t care what kind of cable you used to get the picture in front of his eyes, nor will he worry about whether there’s a space in between each piece of equipment mounted in a rack. But he will know right away if he can’t see what he thought he was going to see or if what he can see is out of focus.
Picking camera and lens combinations are one of those areas that have become far easier over time. More sensitive cameras and varifocal lenses have taken most of the work out of the selection process. EM Lock installation has taken most of the work out of the selection process. It is still important however to have a good grasp of the concepts.
Focal length of a lens refers to two main things, the distance a lens can see clearly and the width of the scene a particular lens can see. Focal length is rated in millimeters. The lower the millimeter number, the wider the scene. As you go higher in millimeters, the lens becomes more telephoto and the scene width is greatly reduced. Taking the time to pick the right camera and lens combination will make for a smoother install and a happier customer and reduce the need for return visits.
One aspect of a site survey and system design that is frequently over looked is the environment itself. Not only conditions like temperature and weather extremes, but also physical aspects of the environment. I was recently out at a customer’s site looking at a parking lot through the view of his cameras. The customer told me the view was good now but in the spring when the trees bloom he cannot see anything. His system was installed in the winter when all the trees were bare. Please remember that trees grow. Those newly planted saplings will become towering oaks in a few years. Make sure they won’t impede your view now or ever.
Physical obstruction aren’t only limited to the great outdoors. Warehouses are notorious for large shelving and stacks of product. Shelves and products are subject to reconfiguration at any time. Make sure your camera placement is high enough so that it doesn’t get blocked by a stack of boxes.
It seems obvious to take things like that into consideration but I can tell you it doesn’t always happen that way. In times like we are experiencing today the need to get in and out of a project quickly becomes very important to the bottom line, but we can’t let it compromise the integrity of our system design.
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