Robin:

We'd like to welcome you to Safety and Security That Elevates Your Job Sites. Please notice that this is a sponsored event brought to you by LiveView Technologies. Please note that any opinions expressed are those of presenters, and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE. ASCE also ask that presenters and participants refrain from discussion surrounding competitors and pricing of products and services. Our speaker today is Phil Brophy, Principal Strategic Security Solutions. And moderating for today's event is Michael Hanks from LiveView Technologies. And now, it is my pleasure to welcome and turn things over to Michael Hanks.

Michael Hanks:

Thank you so much, Robin. We're really excited to be joining here today everyone. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen, so we'll have a little presentation here on the side. But yeah, like Robin said, I'm from LiveView Technologies. We're super grateful for ASCE for hosting us and bringing us on. And I'm also really excited to introduce Phil Brophy. He is the Principal of the Strategic Security Solutions. Phil, how about you go and give the audience a little background about yourself and where you come from and all your expertise.

Phil Brophy:

Well, thank you. First of all, I appreciate the invitation to attend and participate in this webinar with everyone. As Mike said, my name's Phil Brophy. I'm a security with about 25 years of experience, both in the DOD side and as well as the DOE side. Most recently, I was the Head of Security at Enel North America, a renewable energy company with about 115 plus locations throughout the US and Canada footprint. Those were solar, wind, geothermal. Previously, we had some hydro sites. Growth opportunity there, they were growing tremendously. About $5 billion worth of growth in the last two years and continuing to next year.

So my responsibility was to essentially start up and continue to drive the footprint of a security organization that would support the renewable activities throughout the US and Canada at these various very large facilities. And we can get into the technologies and some of the hurdles that we went through as we go forward.

Michael Hanks:

Awesome. Well, thanks Phil. I've known Phil for about a year now. He's an awesome guy. I know he has some great stuff to share with everyone. I'm really excited to have him share this with everybody. So a quick overview of what we'll be going over is just diving into the energy sector security. After we discuss that, we're going to jump into more job site security and safety and some of those best practices. Deploying the right solutions that might be best for your organization, and then some other tools for good use. And then, we're going to open that up for discussion and questions at the end. So like Robin mentioned at the beginning, if you do have those questions, feel free to put them in at any time in the Q&A section. So Phil, let's just tee this up and dive into the energy sector security, and just talk about these types of securities and detection and all these fun things. So I'll turn it over to you for this.

Phil Brophy:

Certainly.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah,

Phil Brophy:

Well, great. Thanks, Mike. Well, I think one of the first things I noticed when I came from the DOD world was the remoteness of many of these sites, which had its unique challenges. So operationally, these sites are typically in extremely remote locations. You don't find a 2,800 acre solar facility in downtown Manhattan. Usually, you're in the middle of nowhere. I remember on my first trip, I asked the gentleman, "How do I get there?" And he gave me the direction and he said, "Then you're going to drive seven and a half miles on a gravel road." And I passed two herds of cattle. I thought I had fallen off the earth and I had no idea where I was going. Then suddenly, pops up a wind facility. I'm like, "Okay, great. There is people out here."

So connectivity, I mean, we'll talk about that, that's the biggest thing. But also the remoteness and having the ability to protect your assets at these locations, and the ability to detect, monitor and provide response was a real challenge. There wasn't a lot of ability to bring in infrastructure, and we'll talk about construction in a few minutes. But even the existing remote sites, security was not exactly the primary responsibility initially. So there was a lot of, you're in the middle of nowhere, what could possibly go wrong? And we'll talk about compliance as well with the government oversight.

So as we walked through, it said, "Okay, so as we go forward, let's build in remote monitoring capabilities." We literally have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in assets at a location in the middle of nowhere. One of the sites that I was mentioning, 2,800 acres, the fence line was 58,000 linear feet, so 10 miles of fence. You didn't want to walk that dimension. So how do you do that? Utilizing technology. Well, that's great if you have technology, but how do you then bring it into an actionable amount of data, so that you can find that information and then make it response and increase that efficiency in your response? And then protect the integrity of the site and the ability to have an upgoing, ongoing rather operation that provides you the ability to have these sites' operation, but not in a governmental site like NSA, for example?

So there has to be some autonomy to what they do and work through it. And you also, if you're looking at a wind facility, typically you're co-located literally with a bunch of cows or hay fields. So there's working environments of the landowners as well that have to come into consideration. So you work with that, but utilizing the different technologies, and LiveView was one of the technologies that I've utilized. It gave me some footprints that I could then start to provide actionable data, not only from a security standpoint, but from an operational standpoint. And we can talk about that as we go on.

Michael Hanks:

Awesome. I think that leads us to a first poll question. We want to get the audience involved before you dive into this.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

So let's talk about this, but the poll is ... Everyone should see that the poll just opened up. What is the most challenging aspect of your job on a day-to-day basis? And so is it keeping and training qualified staff? Identifying and preventing site theft? Working without data security solutions? Maintaining safety and reducing liability? Or staying connected to major security issues after hours? So we'll give the audience probably 30 seconds to go ahead and think about that. But Phil, in your expertise, what have you felt? What do you think is going to be number one here? What have you seen in your history of providing security and stuff like that?

‍Phil Brophy:

I think Mike, it's actually a combination of all of these, because if you lose one of these elements, the impact of ... For example, let's take number two, identifying preventing site loss. If there's a theft on-site, what's the impact? I had just started with the company and one of the sites in the middle of nowhere, that seven and a half mile trip across the gravel road was as a result of a theft. It was $150,000 worth of very critical tools. But also, they had stolen the master keys to all of the turbines, which meant that every single turbine in excess of 100 had to be re-keyed at the cost of about $75,000.

Michael Hanks:

Oh my gosh.

Phil Brophy:

So when you look at it, it doesn't sound like, "But they're in the middle of nowhere. What's the big deal?" But if the tool that they have is something that have a six-week lead time, that means you can't do your PM. If the units now could potentially be compromised, how long before you get 100 plus turbines re-keyed? Well, there's probably not a locksmith just sitting there saying, "I'll be out tomorrow." So there's a lead time and potential. And then when you look at those type of things, is it a critical theft? Are there other pots that may have been either damaged, stolen, or impacted by the theft? Those things that impact, and we'll talk about schedules during construction. So there's a number of these elements on here that as a security professional, it falls into my realm of concern.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. And it looks like we just got the answers. It looks like our number one is maintaining safety and reducing liability. So let's make sure we nail on those.

Phil Brophy:

Absolutely.

‍Michael Hanks:

But it still seems pretty high across the board working with outdated security solutions, how to update those, and it stays connected to major security issues after hours. I know that's something that LVT does help with a lot, but we don't want to talk too much about that. But anyway, that's great. Thanks everybody for participating. So Phil, let's just dive a little bit deeper.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

Keeping in mind those poll responses. But yeah, let's talk about and dive into job site security and a little bit more about the safety.

Phil Brophy:

Okay, absolutely. Well, I mean one of the things I quickly learned was that there is oversight within the energy sector. It falls under NERC, which is an element that has been empowered by FERC. So we have all our acronyms from the government. So NERC is the North American Electric Reliability Council, I believe it is. The only thing I remember about them is they love to fine. They will come out and do audits and they will hit you for tens of thousands of dollars per day in fines, up to a million dollars. But the interesting takeaway, they are the only US agency that is empowered by Congress to take over the operations of your site, if you are deemed to be such a national threat to the energy grid.

So probably not a good start to a week, if a bunch of folks in black Suburban show up and say, "We are now taking ownership." Now obviously, this doesn't happen regularly, but you look at the potential opportunity that would have not only the work stoppage but the reputational impact. How would you like to be company A, who is now leading the news in social media reports, that operations have been taken over by the federal government, because their security is in such a bad situation at that point? As well as the fines. Those fines continue until the remediation has taken place.

I noticed that one of the topics on the poll question was a safe work environment and liability. Who wants to go to work with potentially could be life-threatening? I'll just do a little bit of a paid political announcement for Enel. One of the first things they told us the day one was, you are empowered as an employee to shut down any operations if it's unsafe, as an entry-level employee or the CEO. And they took it very, very serious. I will give them credit for that. And because they want people to be safe, they're working in potentially very dangerous situations, I mean the top of a 300-foot turbine, are working the middle of a solar field. When you are working with very high voltage 374 KV interconnect, it's not like plugging a lamp in.

So there's a lot of potential there. So the employee morale, you would never want to be in a place that says, "Well, we only lost three people last year. What's the big deal? And we saved all this money." So employee morale is important. Safety is critical to the continued success. It also impacts your productivity. The last thing you want to do is, you just think in your own world. If you want to take your life savings and put it into a bank, you probably don't want to have a bank that's been recently hacked. So you look at the safety and the security protocols for that bank. Same way with a company. If you're trying to retain and entice people to come to work for your company, the last thing you want to do is have a very poor safety record that OSHA has been on-site 12 times this past year. Something you don't want to do.

Then we look at project impacts. Any project impacts at the site causes delay, which translates into financial impact. Those financial impacts could be critical down the road to loss revenue, delays, project overrides. Those type of things are impacting, especially if it's somebody that's funding this project and they're expecting their return to be online, say September, and you don't go live until February, because of a security event on-site, that could cost millions of dollars.

One of the big thing in the renewable energy is, Congress had provided a number of tax credits. And those tax credits were based on commissioning dates and successfully meeting those dates. If you don't meet those dates, you could literally lose tens of millions of dollars, and that's really not a career enhancer. Usually, most companies, the last two weeks of the year, it's kind of like, "Okay, who's taking vacation? Off they go, no big deal." The last two weeks at Enel was usually pretty crazy, because they had three, four or five different projects that were going online, had to be commissioned and approved, so that they could say that they had met the target dates and be awarded the millions of dollars in tax credits that only made the project functional as a result of that funding. Loss of that funding could be huge.

The next bullet talks to critical materials. So if you have a lay-down area, for example, and I keep using the renewable energies, but this is true for most infrastructure. If you have critical hardware pots that are on-site, lead times of five, 10, 20 months lead time to get those on-site, the theft or the vandalism of those critical pots can really lead to unknown delays, but financial ruins. So for example, if you have a loss of cable. So the cable, yeah, it's very expensive.

Say it's a connector cable between the substation and the transformer, and say it's $70 a foot, they steal 1,000 feet, $70,000. To a multimillion, $300 million project, that's not a big deal. It's not a rounding era. But to get that cable, there's a six-week lead time. Which means now the job that was supposed to be happening on Tuesday cannot happen until four months down the road, because of the lead time on the cable. So not only did you lose the $70,000, what is the project impacts during that four-month, we're down, we can't connect in the transformer and put the system online. So those are the project impacts that you have to be aware of. That the theft, it doesn't sound like much, but when you look downstream, what's the impact to the theft of those products and how does it work?

Then last is the site integrity. The site integrity, again, you want to be working in a closed work environment regardless of your infrastructure project, so that you know who's on-site. You have control of the environment. Nothing has changed that you're not aware of, whether it's weather related or human related. And also, the ability to perform efficiently and professionally, so you have the ability to know what's going on on your site. It might be just as little as a gate being left open and somebody bringing stuff on board.

I see a dumpster on the slide, for example, that somebody put some hazmat stuff inside of your site overnight, that you didn't know about. And suddenly, your whole site's shut down because you've got a hazmat bill. Small little things like that you don't think about, but when you're in the middle of nowhere ... And just even if you look, and I was thinking a lot of bridge constructions are going to be ongoing with the new infrastructure bill that came out. These are in regular metropolises that people are going to be driving to every day. So the integrity of those sites are going to be critical. And the ability to make sure that the hardware and the materials are there and not compromised as well as the safety of people that belong, as well as safety of people that don't belong on the sites is going to be critical.

Michael Hanks:

Totally. Yeah, I think that's that part there, the site integrity, but also, you diving into the safety of the workers and anybody that might be there is super important. So that leads us to the next the slide, Deploying the Right Solutions. Now obviously, this is a LiveView Technology unit that we deploy, but we're going to talk about multiple technologies. But Phil, let's talk about that. What are some of the best solutions in your career that you've found? And what people should be thinking about when they set up the security?

Phil Brophy:

Well, I think that the biggest thing I always said with any solution that I deploy, you don't have to be a computer programmer to use it. Many times during the sales presentation, everything goes very smoothly because it's in a controlled environment. And then you take it out and you put it into an environment that has questionable cell connectivity, questionable power, questionable skillsets of people that are going to be using it. So I always used to use the theme that, if my third shift weekend security officer knows how to use the technology with three clicks and get to do what they need to do, then this is a technology that I want.

I've never been a big fan of the ones that are the best with the bells and the whistles. I need it to be functional. I need it to be reliable. I need it to be consistently deliver on the product that I was buying. Because if I'm building a system or a security program around that, I need to make sure that it comes to work every single day. The human element sometimes can be the biggest override that you have to make, especially in remote locations, because sometimes the human response isn't 24/7/365. People are people. So this is one of the reasons why I've utilized the LiveView Technology in the past, because it doesn't call in sick and its uptime was 99.9% of the time. So it worked out very well.

It gave me that ability to engage on my iPhone 24 hours a day. It gave me the opportunity to remotely monitor. It gave me the protection by utilizing camera systems that can set up protection zones. And then if there's a penetration, whether it's a human or an animal or a vehicle, it would give me an alert, of which then I could respond appropriately. And so I was proactively notified, as opposed to Monday morning when we found out that we had an event that could have been mitigated on Saturday morning, at 2:30 in the morning.

Mike, if you want, I can tell them my downtown Lowell, Massachusetts story about the first time I used the LiveView Technology. I had heard about it and I was skeptical. And I talked to LiveView at an event and they said, "Well, we have a unit if you want to use it." So I had a hydro site, downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, right adjacent to a college. And anybody who's been to colleges, you know that's probably where most of the good bars are. And so, we were using it for the water levels. And so although it was located in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, the site supervisor was about an hour away. So he would have to literally drive to the site to see what the water levels were of. Should they open the dam? Should they close the dam? What do they do for the water flows for the power generation?

By strategically placing a unit, it gave me the infrastructure capability that he could actually log on and see that the water height was approximately 10 feet, which was perfect for what he had to do. Had it dropped or gone too high overnight, he would've had to do certain problems, but he wouldn't have known about that until he got there. That worked out really well for me. And the reason I bring it up with the portability of the unit was to put in a hardwired camera system to do exactly what I just described, was going to be probably 75 to $100,000 based on the proximity of where it was. Based on the business model for that hydro plant, it wasn't in their budget to do. So we just ran by the seat of our pants, hoped for the best in bringing in a technology and a solution that was practical and easily deployed. The site supervisor loved it.

So from a security perspective, we had a big fence around it, no big deal. But at 11:30 on a Friday night, I got an alert on my phone and I opened it up, and I happened to see the fence line. And I noticed four thermal streams going through my fence. I'm like, "Okay, this is interesting." And so at 11:30 at night, you figure, why not? Let have some fun? So I activated remotely the spotlight and the two-way communication, and notified the four streamers that they were in a restricted area. They were trespassing and should leave immediately. And I immediately saw those four streams turn to the left and flee the area.

So from a security perspective, mission accomplished. I would never have known. Now that was just an unfortunate situation, that was probably going to be a biohazard situation. Didn't have to worry about that as much as if they had some mal-intent and they decided, "Let's climb the fence and go in and see what we can disturb the operations at that facility," got hurt or stole or broken some critical infrastructure equipment, that facility could have been brought down. So deploying mobile technology, being able to remotely monitor its conditions, two-way communications. And it was being monitored by a third party vendor as well, who was responding on a call tree protocol to let me know whether I need it.

I also used this at construction-sites in California where they would watch things. It was a strip mall area, and we were doing construction there on a multi-million dollar renovation. And they would let me know, "Yeah, the kids are gathering. Now, wait a minute, there's a bunch of kids by the back door. Do you want us to contact the police?" I wouldn't have known that until the next morning if I had hardwired cameras because I didn't have a security presence on-site. Utilizing this technology, I did have that presence and it was being mitigated. And they were able to stay up around the clock rather than me having to be up that way.

Investigative tools, not only was a deterrent, because as soon as we turned those spotlights, the kids would flee the area, which is what we want them to do. But say they had been an injury, a trip and fall, someone alleges that they got hurt in the area. I have some now documented technology, the video rather, that I can go back and look and see what happened, and do a good investigative tool instead of just saying, "Somebody fell at some time on Saturday night." So it gave me that opportunity.

Then also, the ability to see the progress of a project. I'm assuming from a civil engineer perspective, for example, folks may be interested, how's the project going? What did it look like when we first broke ground? Where are we at mid-project? And well, look at that, we've got the ribbon cutting and we've got our first ... It's completed. So you have that historical process.

The last thing I'll talk about is the real-time analytics, the artificial intelligence. A lot of video management systems that security professionals use now are fed by their camera systems that provide all this data. So you can do a lot of facial recognition. You can do a lot of alerting that's based on make model and vehicles. Is it a human? So in the remote sites we were in, there was one site that we had a large problem with live boars, and they are mean. 400 pound animals-

Michael Hanks:

Yeah, they are.

Phil Brophy:

Who really don't like to share their finds, but they were also boring under our fence. And so, it didn't sound like much when we first talked about it, but the reality was, you can imagine being in the middle of a solar facility and here comes Boris the wild animal charging at you, and you didn't even know that he was inside of the confines of the fence. This technology being deployed, thermal imaging, thermal technologies that can detect human versus animal was very helpful in supporting our operations from a safety perspective.

From a security perspective, not a high threat. We put it more around our cones of coverage, if you will, where the substation was the most critical and then gradually, reduced out our security coverage all the way out to the outside of the fence. And as the critical impact of penetration occurred, you would heighten your security, enhance the security deterrent presence that you would have within those various levels of protection.

So this type of ability to have that protection, advise our employees, again, we talked about operational safety and security on-site, they were very helpful of it. Because the last thing I want to do is, at 6:30 in the morning, you're half asleep, and suddenly you get a raging bull coming at you that you didn't even know was on-site. So that was kind of the good things we had.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. I think that leads us into our next poll. What is the number one reason preventing you from upgrading your security plan with new resources and technology? Is it budget restraints? Lack of support from higher management? Problems with infrastructure? Unable to determine which solutions are most effective? Little trust in cloud-based technologies? Or it isn't a priority to me? So again, we'll give you all those listening about 30 seconds to answer. But Phil, in your experience, I'm sure you've come up with every single one of those, depending on the job site that you've been working on. But, yeah.

‍Phil Brophy:

No, you're absolutely right, Michael. Unfortunately, security has always been viewed as a hindrance, not a resource. And that's a mindset, it's a cultural adaptation, it was always viewed as an overhead expense. But I would argue that a strong security presence at a facility is an enhancer. It increases the job's efficiencies and performance, and in creating the fact that budget restraints. Oh, I've dealt with that one. I actually fought for budget on a project that it was amazing. The overall project security costs was one third of 1% of the project. And the view of some of the project management was that, unless I reduced my project needs by 50%, I would be crippling the project, and I just shook my head. I said, "You have got to be kidding me."

A security budget cost was say million dollars on a $300 million project. That's a rounding era. But they were spending tens of thousands of dollars weekly to regrade the road, which was not a problem. And I'm kind of like, "Well, why don't you get better gravel and you won't have to regrade the road as much?" But again it's, security has now been viewed as a value add until there's a situation that could have been mitigated or potentially averted by putting the right security in place. And it's also an education. It's a purpose of educating the decision makers on how proactive security is much better than reactive security.

A case can be made, a business case can be made that shows that the security of an environment, whether, again we talked about regulatory. Also, just the overall comfort of the employee on-site. Who wants to work at a site that is not safety-wise as well as security-wise and takes the care, the duty of care for our employees into place? That is something that security has not done a good job, and I have really made it a point. And now, that was one of my main focuses for four plus years is educating people how security can help be a contributor to the overall success of the program.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah, totally. Phil, do you have some best practices of how to potentially approach ... I know you mentioned a few things of how to or what to talk about.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

But when they're going to the executives, since this is the biggest thing of budget restraints, what are some key takeaways that you might be able to share of how they might be able to more efficiently approach their executives to get that?

Phil Brophy:

Certainly. Yeah, I think you have to do your work. There's a lot of data out there. Do your homework, be able to do a ... What I used to do is a risk assessment on every site. And again, I still remember senior person ... Apologize. A senior person telling me that, "We're in the middle of nowhere, what could go wrong?" And I quickly had to tell them that, "A lot could go wrong. And when it does go wrong, you and I are going to have a lot more discussions." And you try to avoid that as much as possible. But as I discussed in a number of the different potential issues that could happen with the critical hardware being compromised and other things, until those happen, it really isn't at the front of the discussion. But I can tell you, as we had events occur, it was much easier to have those discussions because I had a reference point.

Maybe this is a good point where I can use the business case, Mike, where actually, we had an ongoing construction. It was remote as usual. We had a security officer coming off the main road, which was about an eighth to a half a mile in, off of the main road in the middle of Southwest part of the United States. They were going to be doing operations for access control. So we had a human person taking names and numbers and things like that, but we also had a remote video camera system set up. And so I could see real-time what was going on from a security perspective, and they could also monitor what was coming and going off site.

So from an access control standpoint, I had real-time solutions on-site. From an operational standpoint, vendor monitoring. You have a vendor that comes in and says, "Yeah, we had two guys on-site. They were there all day long." "Well, no, actually you weren't. You arrived at 9:14, I have the video. And here's the license plate recognition, if you've deployed that type of solution. And I see you left at 12:02. So we're going to be paying you for three hours, not eight hours as you're billing me." So there's a cost savings right there.

So get back to that other discussion was, we had one strategic checkpoint coming in. And then, about almost three-quarters of a mile down the road, we were having a lay-down area where we would probably have about $5 million worth of hardware being stored for a better part of six months. As things started to evolve, they would pick off of that, and as shipments came in, they were dropping them in. There was a request to have a security officer there, and that will be our security for that $5 million of hardware, critical infrastructure hardware. And I made the case to said, "Why don't we use mobile monitoring there as well?"

The reason being is a security officer is a human being. They're going to come and go as they want. Not that a security officer would ever fall asleep, but on Saturday morning, at 3:30 in the morning on a beautiful cloudy night in the southwest part of the country, more than likely Charlie may catch a few winks. So he's off duty, he's not watching what's going on, and my $5 million of product is not being watched. So my business solution was, put a mobile unit there, utilize technology, be able to monitor it, 24/7/365.

It's a deterrent because some of the units are equipped with spotlights and strobe lights, which in the middle of nowhere, if you have a strobe light going, it's very aware of the surroundings and a deterrent to people. And if something does happen, I can get real time visibility of what's happening at that environment. And I can contact the police department, sheriff's department to respond, give them license plate. "There's three guys, two pickup trucks. One guy's wearing a checkered hat and they're loading up hardware in the back of a brown Chevy pickup. License plate, one, two, three, ABC." That's fantastic. As opposed to Charlie being unaware of what's going on and not even knowing until the shift is over, that we just lost critical infrastructure pots.

So we went with that, and then we had the business side of it, and this is what kind of sold the project management was, Charley would cost about $400,000 for billable hours. This technology was going to cost me substantially less money than that. It was literally a few dollars per hour. So when I did that business, the savings was well over 250, almost $300,000 over the project, for me to put down a solution that was actually an enhancement to the overall security and safety program. And they went with that, because we had done that.

Now, if I didn't have that rapport with the construction folks, we never would've got to that discussion point. But it was building that rapport, having them understand what realistically can be provided by security, and working with them as a cooperative. Again, not a hindrance, but as a resource. And having that ability to confer with them and give them positive feedback and realistic expectations on what can be provided. And it worked out very, very well.

Michael Hanks:

Awesome. So I know we've already talked about a lot of great use cases with LVT, and you have a few more things that you want to discuss here.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

At the same time, Phil, once you're done with this, I think I would love to hear some other best practices that you have come across in your career, what other types of tools that any of the listeners might be interested in. But I'll turn it back over to you for this part.

Phil Brophy:

Sure. Again, as a security professional, you are always looking at what is the situation and what is the budgetary restraints. Everybody would like a blank check. We all know we don't have that, at all of our jobs. We'd love to just say, "There's no budget. Just go spend whatever you need." That's not going to happen. So you try to look at the best practices and you try to get $1.25 out of every $1.00 you spend. And one of the things that I've tried to do is expand the thought process that talks about this is not just a security solution. It is an operational enhancement as well.

Why I say that is that again, we talk about that 2,800 acre facility. They had got four inches of rain, the environment was not safe. And if we had not use technology to the best of our ability, whichever technology it was, in a proactive approach that gave us the enhancements that we needed, so that operationally ... From a security perspective, you're not going to have people with four inches of rain and the mud up to your knees. It's really not a security issue. It's a safety issue. It's an operational issue. And utilizing the right technologies gave us the opportunity to integrate all of those things, and proactively respond to those needs and the conditions.

The remote monitoring. With the construction that's ongoing throughout the US and Canada, where Enel had worked, infrastructure is the biggest concern because typically, there is none. I've been to facilities where I couldn't even drive 40 feet when they kicked off the project, because they hadn't brought in the heavy excavation folks or the explosives to blow the rocks as they were starting to go and start laying out the roadway infrastructure. Which meant I had no power, I had no connectivity. It's one of those two-cell cell bars as you get closer. And as you get further away from the hotel, you lose all connectivity.

So do you have the connectivity? Are you able to talk about it? Is it real-time monitoring? Especially in the Southwest areas, you're dealing with a lot of weather conditions. You go up to the Midwest, you're dealing with tornadoes and hurricanes. You go to the Northeast, you're dealing ... We're scheduled now to have a massive blizzard this weekend.

Michael Hanks:

Oh, man. Oh, no.

Phil Brophy:

Yep. They started at 18 inches and they said, "Maybe even more." I'm like, "Beautiful, this is going to work out great." But the reality is wildfires. I know recently being out in Utah, if something that goes on in California, well the air quality coming through. So utilizing technology that can provide real-time, actionable. We talked about real AI analytics. Is the air quality unsafe as a result of the smoke coming from California of a wildfire into your workspace? Having to be able to do that and be able to give the folks that have to make a decision as far as being on-site in a safe or secure work environment, the technology that will provide them with the data to make those decisions.

Then I did briefly talk about vendor monitoring. That is something when you figure vendors will be spending. They'll bill you hundreds of dollars an hour to be on-site. It gives you some vision, if you are in your office several thousand miles. We've all been working from home for the last several months, and it seems like years. But several months, for you the ability to actually bring it up on an iPhone. If you have them parking at certain areas, was a delivery made? When's it scheduled to come in? Where did they park? If you have a designated delivery area, if that person shows up at 3:30 in the morning, you know that person's on-site. And if they're not there, then you know don't have to drive to work, because there isn't a product that you need to install. So those are again, another tool in your toolbox that can help with not only the security and the safety environment, but the operational enhancements that make your project run more efficiently, effectively, and cost efficiently as well.

Adapting to the various areas, environments that we work in. Again, there was that folks that were working at the solar site in Southwest, United States, there was a tornado that went through. And it was 100 and plus mile an hour winds that were blowing on top of a mesa, which I never knew what a mesa was. I'm from the New England. I've realized it is one heck of a big rock, and the elevation was about 500 feet. And I can just imagine what it would've been like while that 100 plus mile an hour wind was blowing. So you had potential damages that were out there, and you had to worry about that from again, a safety standpoint. You have these projectiles of hardware and other things flying around up there, but it gave you real time visibility of what was happening.

We've already talked about the case, the user case rather, for on-site security versus remote monitoring capabilities. It's not that security officers aren't needed, but this again, is another tool that can supplement and support. Because if you remember, the description was, during regular business hours, we had a security officer on-site and they were utilizing visitor management software. They could use access control software. They could utilize license plate recognition software.

Mike, you asked about different tools that we've used in the past. Those type of systems being integrated into the day-to-day security program footprint are critical. And the good thing is a lot of information now is able to be integrated across platforms so that if you have an area that's restricted, that if they're doing excavation for example, and someone has to have certain training, you can program the person's access card with training criteria. And there are wearables that you could have that would pick up some devices, would pick up that Phil Brophy is in a certain area. Well, if I don't have the right training, that will send out an alert. And now your safety people can respond and say, "Hey Phil, you don't belong in this area. You don't have the appropriate training."

So there's a lot of integration. I think that would be the takeaway from any type of technologies is, how does it integrate the working in a siloed environment with security systems is over. Everybody wants to know how I can integrate everything into the one solution. And then, you talked about the monitoring at a SOC or a Security Operation Center. This is the type of technology that they could be in Oklahoma and they could be watching a site in Montana, and they're doing their job just like they were sitting in Montana. And that's the whole thing, that you can integrate this technology as well as doing multiple sites at the same time. So we had seven sites that were under construction at any given time. Me being able to monitor all of those, from a man standpoint, that would've been cost prohibitive. But from a technology standpoint, if I deploy it correctly, I'm still doing my job remotely.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. Well, Phil, this has been awesome. I know we're running up on time.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

So we want to leave it up to some Q&As. Really appreciate all the insight and everything that you've shared. So yeah, if anyone has any additional questions, feel free to go in the Q&A and ask those. Robin did put in the chat that if you do have any questions following this webinar, you want to learn more about LiveView Technologies, you can email sales@liveviewtech.com or give us a call 801-221-9408. But we do have one question. You mentioned a few things that I think were already beneficial, but just in case this triggers some more ideas.

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

‍Michael Hanks:

There's a lot of places that like Third World countries or even in the states where they don't have budget for the safety on-site, so it gets neglected, what might be some really budget friendly things that they could implement if they don't have a lot of funds?

Phil Brophy:

Sure.

Michael Hanks:

Any ideas there?

‍Phil Brophy:

Yeah. I think one thing I would strongly suggest, and unfortunately, the site that I talked to you about earlier in the very beginning with the seven and a half mile roadway was they had gone to BJs and bought the eight camera selection, and they had quality cameras that wouldn't give us anything. So if you're going to do any type of deployment of hardware, try to get the best bang for the buck. I would rather have one or two good cameras that are tied in. And that way if it does, something does happen.

Now, the reason I did like LiveView was when you do the analytics on the cost and you do the ROI, it was literally under $10 an hour for coverage, as opposed to hundreds of thousands. And I'll defer to the sales group, I don't get anything out of this, but I just will let you know that the sales group can give you what the cost would be. But what I liked about them was, it's easily deployable, it's instantaneously up, and it was cost prohibitive, and you're talking about dollars a day. Less than $100 a day, I had literally a 24/7 security officer. So if you're talking about Third World countries or countries that are in environments that may be extremely rural, as long as there's connectivity, you can get the support from a security and safety standpoint, utilizing existing technology that will give you real-time monitoring and interaction capabilities.

Michael Hanks:

Great. Yeah, that's awesome, Phil. Well, thank you so much. I think we might want to turn it back over to ASCE. Robin if you have anything else. But I just want to say, thank you, Phil. That was awesome. Thanks for joining. And thank you ASCE and all your members for joining this webinar. I hope this was insightful for many of you. But yes, thanks again. And yeah.

Robin:

Yeah. I really want to thank LiveView Technologies for sponsoring this event. And Michael and Phil, both of you providing all this valuable information for our attendees. We really appreciate it. And this concludes today's ASCE-sponsored webinar. I hope everybody has a good day.

Phil Brophy:

Thank you.