In today’s ever-evolving educational landscape, universities face a multitude of communication and security challenges. The imperative to provide a safe and productive environment for students and staff, coupled with the growing demand for seamless communication, necessitates that universities stay at the forefront of innovation. This blog considers the communication and security challenges encountered and how Storm’s solution can tackle these issues.
Communication challenges in universities
Campus-wide connectivity
Universities encompass vast campuses with multiple buildings, making it essential to ensure uninterrupted communication across the entire site. Traditional communication methods may fall short in effectively covering these extensive areas.
Solution: Storm offers an advanced wireless communication system that enables campus-wide connectivity, enhancing safety and productivity. It ensures that busy site teams, security personnel, educational staff, and administrators can easily stay connected wherever they are, using a simple wireless push to talk over cellular (PoC) communication solution.
Using Storm’s platform multiple teams can communicate without complex radio setup that can leverage existing Eduroam wifi technology.
Emergency communication
In the event of an emergency, swift and effective communication is paramount. Universities must have dependable systems in place to alert students and staff and coordinate emergency response efforts.
Solution: Storm provides instant communication systems that seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure. This speed and reliability ensure that critical messages can be broadcast instantly, aiding universities in responding to emergencies promptly and efficiently, and supporting duty of care through its reliable rapid communication.
Campus security
Ensuring the safety of students and staff remains a top priority for universities. Campuses are accessible to the public, making them susceptible to security threats such as theft, vandalism, and trespassing. Managing access to campus facilities is crucial to prevent unauthorised entry and maintain security.
Solution: The Storm platform offers comprehensive security options, including geofencing, push to locate and location services, to help universities monitor and secure their premises. Its access control systems act as deterrents to potential threats and provide valuable evidence in case of incidents.
Communication between departments
Universities comprise various departments and administrative units that frequently need to collaborate. Ensuring effective communication between these units can be challenging, particularly in larger institutions.
Solution: Storm’s secure communication solutions encompass features like group calling and instant messaging, facilitating seamless collaboration among different departments. These tools foster improved communication and information sharing among staff members. The user interface is available in multiple languages.
Converge all work based communications onto one secure encrypted device. Storm’s built in security offers privacy protection and prevents unauthorised access to data, avoiding concerns about leakage of personal or student information or organisational data. Safeguarding sensitive information is imperative for maintaining trust and compliance with data protection regulations.
Ease of communications for estates & facilities teams
Estates teams are responsible for delivering services and facilities to staff, students and visitors. Many different responsibilities fall within the Estates teams’ remit, and the issues to deal with are varied from maintenance/repairs, damages, hazards, pest control issues and small works, from residential and non-residential such as gardens and sports grounds.
Due to the nature of the work, these busy teams need to provide rapid response and support to those requiring help across expansive campuses and sites. Given these roles involve ongoing contact with students, staff, contractors and visitors, having excellent communication resources will assist Estates and Facilities teams to respond to varied and urgent requirements.
Solution:
Features of the Storm solution such as push-to-locate, can help universities to reach the right employees at the right place at the right time, and improve response times and resource allocation. When jobs are raised with the helpdesk, the platform can be used to prioritise jobs in order of urgency seeing that issues which cause the most risk are dealt with immediately.
The fully integrated workforce management solution can support Estates and Facilities teams through task creation/management, scheduling, attendance and time monitoring, to forms and checklists. The instant comms and multimedia messaging capabilities see that an accurate, detailed description of the problem can be reported helping teams to categorise work appropriately.
From booking in routine repairs, to reporting health and safety hazards and minor maintenance issues, it can be used to deal with everything in.
Conclusion
Universities encounter unique communication and security challenges due to their size and diverse environments. From campus-wide communication systems to state-of-the-art security solutions, Storm’s expertise can assist universities in creating safer and more connected learning environments.
