Life Safety and Exit Devices

            Let me introduce you to your mantra: “It's all about life safety.” Once when I was 17 years old, in the mid-1960s, I went to an office building late in the afternoon where I was hoping to go to a business that had a product I was interested in. I had called earlier and they had said to “come anytime,” which unfortunately I took literally. (I was seventeen — what can I say?) Their offices were on the 8th floor of a 12-story building in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I arrived there just at 6:15 p.m. on a Friday evening and caught the front door of the Ground Floor Lobby as a man was walking out. I took the elevator to the eighth floor (most ceiling lights are off). I wandered down the dark hallway and located the company's office.

This may be the most important chapter in this book. In fact, if someone learns everything else in the book, but does not learn the material in this chapter, that person would be a failure in the security industry. Life Safety is the most important element of security. The most basic core element of all security is to protect life first, whether in regards to access control or preventing workplace violence or terrorism. This chapter discusses the apparent conflict between security and life-safety principles and how they should be resolved. We will discuss National and Local Life-Safety Codes and Regulations and how they apply to Electronic Access Control Systems. We will talk about how Locks and Exit Devices affect life safety.

Vehicles need to be controlled on a property to ensure proper traffic flow (employees here, visitors there, etc.) and to control entry to restricted areas, such as to an employee parking structure. The least expensive and most familiar way to do this is by using a standard lift-arm barrier gate. Lift-arm (or semaphore arm, named after the semaphore flags that were used to guide airplanes onto aircraft carriers) barrier gates come in a variety of configurations depending on the width of the lane and the frequency of opening. The simplest semaphore arm gate comprises a metal stand housing the motor and operating electronics and a gate arm made of wood, aluminum, or PVC plastic.