April 12, 2011

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comments

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Ken:

Regarding Alarm Lingo! Let’s do away with “Opening and Closing” and replace with “Disarm” and “Arm”. Do away with “Day” and “Night” circuits and call them “Disarmed Mode” and “Armed Mode”. Help the technicians and do away with the word NORMAL (normally) in reference circuit types, devices, zones, etc. Why do we install a “Normally Open” Magnetic Contact in a closed loop? Why is there a designation on a contact that reads NC for “normally closed” when in actual fact the contact in the absence of the magnet is “OPEN?

The two states of a input zone should be called “Ready to Arm” and “Not Ready to Arm” instead of “closed, normal, whatever.

Why do we quote our customers on “protection” when really we are installing “detection?” “Protection” implies that we are going to protect our customer against a fire or a break-in. The vast majority of what we offer does not do anything until AFTER a fire has started or the place has been broken into.

Some things to think about.

Dave Currie

Damar Security Systems

Sarnia Ontario Canada

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Hi Ken,

Thought this might provoke some kind of response.

In reply to Dusans suggestion to change the wording of Police Dispatch / False Alarm, perhaps we can take a vote.

Choose one from column A and one from Column B

Vote for your favorite. Or ..... add some of your own.

 

A B

FALSE DISPATCH

Erroneous Account

Fictitious Announcement

Groundless Broadcast

Illusory Communique

Inaccurate Declaration

Incorrect Execution

Mistaken Message

Spurious Notice

Unfounded Proclamation

Untrue Report

Wrong Transmission.

 

Gene

Reliable Alarm

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Ken,

On the surface it may look like we're splitting hairs when it comes to alarm terminology, but I think it is a valuable discussion. Words that are not precise can come back to haunt us. Would it be best to tell customers, "When our central station receives an alarm signal it notifies the proper authorities of the alarm activation so that the proper help can be dispatched."? This should make it clear that the responsibility of the response center is to notify the proper athorities of the alarm activation and that the responsibility for dispation lays with the local agencies.

Chris Allen

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Dusan is correct. Now we'll need a committee! However it happens, remember, we don't often get chances to try and 'reframe the discussion'. As shown, this is long overdue, but make it count. After all these decades, we haven't even agreed on what a true 'false alarm' is yet.

Zeke Lay

Comtec

Oklahoma

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Are there really false alarms or are there "subscriber error", "animal trips sensor", 'weather related", "equipment failure", "intentional door shaking to test the police", etc. etc. etc.

Alan R.ENGEL

Security - Investigation Consultant

State of Illinois

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Ken,

Does the wording "Smoke Alarm" and "Smoke Detector" appear to mean the same. I believe that a Smoke Alarm" should mean a stand-alone or inter-connected device which sounds an alarm when smoke is present, while a "Smoke Detector" should mean an initiating device which is then connected to a system. How do others differentiate these two terms?

Alan Mills

SWAT Security Systems

 

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Great Point Ken

For years SIAC has encouraged the use of "Dispatch Request" as opposed to Dispatch and False Dispatch versus False Alarm. We are also encouraging the use of more friendly terms such as on and off as opposed to arm and disarm, bypass versus shunt and my favorite, cancel versus abort.

"False alarms" occur frequently and 77% are stopped by making one call to the premises with no contact with the authorities.

However, when we do make contact it is a dispatch request, not a dispatch. I know that it is merely semantics but with the vast majority of our problem being customer error we need to find a kinder more gentle way to educate our customers and it starts with our communication, and thus our vocabulary.

By the way; that 77% stopped by one call jumps to almost 90% when we employ two call verification (ECV) with no reduction in customer service, and in fact the likelihood of faster response as we eliminate over 50% of the dispatch requests when we are only using one call verification.

This summer SIAC will roll out an installer training program to educate installation technicians on how to better educate the alarm users. It only makes sense that we take responsibility for the extremely high incidence of "user error" and the best place for that to happen is during the education process after a new installation.

Please keep up the process of making us all think about what we are doing.

Best regards

Ron Walters, Director

SIAC