General Electric

General Electric is a global infrastructure, finance, and media company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. GE is a company with a great heritage. Founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison, it is the only company on the Dow Jones Index that was in the original list in 1896. Over 100 years of GE global research has earned two Nobel prizes and thousands of patents. GE is imagination at work. From jet engines to power generation, financial services to water processing, and medical imaging to media content, GE employees worldwide are dedicated to turning imaginative ideas into leading products and services that help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.

GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Its expertise is in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

Pre-existing situation & UTCFS’s role

GE Healthcare's main facility in Italy - covering 6,920 m² over four floors with 430 employees - was moved into a new building. This building was in need of tighter security matching GE's global security regime. Looking at the security approach of GE's facilities around the world, there was a specific need to expand the current system with integrated access control and video surveillance. GE Healthcare turned to UTCFS to provide the solution.

UTCFS’s solution

GE Healthcare's new security system is based on UTCFS's Facility Commander® Wnx platform. This enables significant integration between access control, video surveillance and other building management systems. The Italian headquarters building is equipped with 40 strategically-placed day/night cameras connected to three digital video recorders, 14 door readers and 50 magnetic door locks. The magnetic door locks in combination with badge readers control the opening and closing of doors and act as a basic intrusion detection system, triggering alarms when doors are forced or opened without authorisation. The Facility Commander® Wnx system links access control and video surveillance, making it possible to cross-match events. As a result, when a specific action occurs - a door is opened, forced or access is denied – the video footage of that event is stored automatically on one of the digital hard-disk recorders. The main server in the central control room also manages identical security systems in GE Healthcare's local offices in Rome, Bologna, Turin, Naples and Mestre. With this system no unauthorised action goes undetected, enabling business operations in a secure environment.