In 1999, the City of Las Vegas needed to ensure its detention
facility would be Y2K compliant. They hired another consultant
to look at their existing systems, and recommend improvements.
The key was that compliance would have to be achieved while
maintaining full detention operations.
Meanwhile, Marquis had been commissioned to design and oversee
the implementation of a fiber optic backbone for the facility.
The tight design, including an aggressive timetable, enabled
the city to solicit competitive bids resulting in savings
of 50% (they had unsuccessfully tried to solicit bids without
Marquis), and the implementation of a fiber backbone that
exceeded their expectations. While we were at it, we had built
in spare capacity for all seven buildings; spare capacity
for which the city has been very grateful over the years.
We so impressed the city's project manager, they decided
to rely on our open approach to a problem rather than business
as usual. The other consultant had taken a year to get to
a point where they could talk about the problem. Meanwhile,
Marquis had brought its project to fruition.
The Marquis approach was not to immediately take on the project, design the system and pawn off the problems onto the contractor. We stopped the process cold. The City was going to spend a lot of money on fixing a problem with their existing controls systems through an upgrade. The point of failure was in the end the service and support of the system after it was installed. We sought to ensure the city would not have that problem. And while they were at it, they needed to do a lot of other things. So, we systematically broke it down into self-contained packages, but remembered that this might hinder the installation. Since they were going to spend so much, we listened to their wish list, and carefully wrote it down.
- Mobile laptops in patrol cars with access to city, county,
state and federal databases.
- Radio communications.
- Command and Dispatch center.
- CCTV for the detention center.
- Conversion from a PLC-based system to Digital Controls
in a fully operational Detention Center.
In the end, the city had a clear plan and associated costs.
They could prioritize on immediate concerns and plan to phase
in other aspects. 5 years later they have been able to budget
for and implement everything, even the mobile laptops…using
the configuration first recommended in 1999. |
