A multi-national’s site in Ireland being expanded to include new offices and car parking required more perimeter protection. After a tender process, the OPTEX
The fence was patrolled by guards but such guarding was costly, besides inflexible. The 25 zone fibre-optic perimeter intrusion detection system (PIDS) FD525R had been installed on another of the multi-national’s sites in America and made the shortlist. The system won the tender and was provided to the installer Brinks, via the distributor Anixter.
One of the reasons to choose fibre technology on this site was the length of the perimeter. As the new section of the fence is a 1.25km perimeter, a conventional system would have required signals every 100m. The Fiber SenSys PIDS is split into 25 zones with the alarm outputs programmed to eight PTZ camera inputs that are pre-set along the razor wire fence. As it is quite a specialised job to install the fibre-optic cable, the OPTEX Europe team supported the project from the system design to commissioning assistance.
Austin O’Sullivan, Technical Operations Manager at Brinks, said: “The fence is tested on a fortnightly basis, and so far it has worked consistently. It hasn’t even needed any adjustment since the installation 18 months ago, which is impressive.”
Although the Fiber SenSys did not seem to be the cheapest option at first, Austin says due to its reliability and the low cost of maintenance, the total cost of ownership will actually be lower than the other options they were considering: “Judging by the little maintenance we have had to perform on the fence so far, I can’t envisage having to change very much over the years.”
The makers add that the FD525R provides perimeter security for fence or wall applications: detection of simultaneous events in all zones . The FD525R Alarm Processing Unit transmits alarm and system status information and can be located remotely up to 12km from the fence. The configuration software with the system enables it to be calibrated using over 25 parameters to tune out any noise that could cause false alarms and makes the system reliable, it’s claimed.
