Project Spotlight: Greater Wichita YMCA Access Control

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By Kristen Harper, Controller and HR Manager at Kenton Brothers

Kenton Brothers Systems for Security: Greater Wichita YMCAKenton Brothers partnered with the Greater Wichita YMCA in Wichita, Kansas to add an access control system to their second floor administrative offices. They needed to be able to secure confidential materials. But they still needed to give volunteers and staff the freedom to utilize the space and meeting rooms.

Do you know what YMCA stands for?

YMCA stands for Young Men’s Christian Association or commonly referred to as “the Y”. This is a worldwide organization founded in 1844. YMCA was started with the goal of putting Christian principles into practice. They did this by creating programs that promote healthy lifestyles, strong families, and positive youth development. They are helping build healthy bodies, minds and spirits.

The Greater Wichita YMCA has a community focus on youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. The “Y” has created after school programs to keep teens off the streets. They’ve also created disease management programs that include a comprehensive cancer survivor program and diabetes prevention. Another recent program is the latest trend BOGAFiT (a total body workout on water!)

Kenton Brothers is proud to provide a solution to keep such a well respected, community focused organization All Secure!

Kenton Brothers Systems for Security: Greater Wichita YMCA

Project Spotlight: City of Columbia Access Control

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By Brian Nutt, Mid Mo Territory Manager for Kenton Brothers, talking about an access control project for the City of Columbia

A long term relationship leads to a long term project.

Kenton Brothers Systems for Security - City of Columbia Access Control ProjectStacy Wessing and Brian Nutt from our Mid Mo team have worked with the City of Columbia for over 10 years on numerous projects, some of which included battery backup systems for their data centers, virtualization software, networking equipment, and downtown surveillance cameras. Brian and Stacy have also worked at a previous employer together with some of the City’s current staff. The City knew we could deliver on a project as promised from previous successful experiences and a solid relationship.

In 2017, the City of Columbia issued an RFP for replacing their existing access control system. The existing system had reached end of life and was falling short in the City’s expectations of functionality, manageability and convergence. The RFP was very detailed on expectations of a new system and Kenton Brothers partner, S2 Security, fit this requirement perfectly. The RFP involved several buildings that must communicate with a centralized controller and provide individual site administration.

Upon award of the RFP to KB, several meetings were held to discuss a strategic deployment that would have little to no impact on the City’s day to day functions. The deployment then started with first installing the new controller and setting up schedules and user profiles. The City put together a team to refresh their existing data base and provide a current profile for KB to implement. KB’s own Neal Bellamy was deeply involved with each step of the initial programming of the new controller. The design and build of the controller was a phenomenal success, very few changes were needed and those were rapidly handled by KB’s support team.

Then the deployment began of each City property involved. Each site has new nodes, some of them with multiple nodes, that all must communicate back to the main controller. New card readers were installed at every location to enhance the City’s physical security credential. KB moved right along, as pre-staging and pre-programming of the new equipment was completed by KB and the City for each site, a few days before installation.

As each site was turned up, users experienced very few changes to their typical means of access, which was the intention all along. To install a new system at each site and have very little impact to the City’s day to day business for their citizens and employees. A weekly conference call was scheduled by KB to review the prior week’s install and, to provide a fully engaged project management team with a means for communication of status updates to the City. The City staff is great at letting KB know any perceived potential caveats so that a plan could be implemented in a timely fashion.

In just a couple months on-site, KB is nearing completion of the entire project, which is 3 months ahead of schedule. It takes a great collaboration with the customer, a very detailed plan of execution, and a great team concept. KB’s involvement with the customer at each and every step of this entire project has made it a great success. Special thanks go out to each and every City employee involved and the great installation team at KB. David Potter and Paul Rudkin did a great installation job on every site and, they have made this project a great success for the City and KB.

Kenton Brothers Project Spotlight: East 9 at PickWick Plaza

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By David Strickland, Vice President of Kenton Brothers, with a video blog post about the East 9 at Pickwick Plaza project.

Kenton Brothers is proud to present a project spotlight on East 9 at Pickwick Plaza.

A 1930’s era hotel masterfully updated to a modern, luxurious, multi-use facility by Gold Crown Properties, Inc.

Kenton Brothers is proud to provide access control, IP video surveillance, guest call, intrusion detection and public display audio visual for this landmark project.

Check out the before and after shots in the video!

Project Spotlight: Ventura Foods

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Ventura FoodsVentura Foods is an industry leader in food processing. Kenton Brothers has been working with the management team at Ventura Foods to help them develop and implement a surveillance system for improved physical monitoring as well as safety in the workplace. One key component of this endeavor is video monitoring.

Neal Bellamy headed up the overall engineering for this project. The solution he developed was presented to Ventura Foods so that they could see a logical and systematic approach to their video security needs. Neal devoted over 30 hours to the engineering phase using products from 2N Helios (IP-based intercom), Aricont Omni (dome cameras), Sony and Hikvision, and custom built servers running Milestone software.

Installation:

The project was underway, with one stipulation… it had to be completed within 30 days, start to finish.

The installation team assigned Nate Chapman to the project to keep the team moving and the project on pace. With a top notch cabling crew kicking off the project, Nate had them quickly progressing with the cable management phase.

Next came the Equipment installers. A strong two man crew (Jason Haney and Tony Shepardson) began the process of hanging cameras. Some of these cameras needed to be installed in hard to reach locations. You can see Tony hanging over a few tanker cars in the rail yard while installing one of the cameras.

We had four 26 foot scissor lifts and one 60 foot boom lift in operation for the first three weeks of this project. We had to be careful with equipment placement while working around the busy manufacturing schedule of the processing plant.

Next came the Kenton Brothers IT guru, James Stevenson. James started his phase of the project by building custom servers. He also set up 5 switch locations throughout the plant. This included fiber installation and testing of the backbone, and then making the cameras live.

Ventura Foods Ventura Foods

Training:

After the team completed the system installation as well as testing, tuning, and configuring the systems, they did final cleanup and scheduled the customers first phase of training. James headed up the training and went above and beyond to make sure the Ventura Foods team had time to learn and understand the operation of their new system. After 2 weeks of “burn in” time, James went back for another round of training.

It takes a strong team with a lot of experience to install and configure a high-end surveillance system. We’re proud to say that Ventura Foods is very happy with their new system!