Command centers are used in a variety of industries, from the government to corporations. They’re designed to bring together multiple disciplines and sectors when there’s a crisis. It’s a useful tool for quickly coordinating efforts and dispatching resources. If you’ve never heard of a command center before, you might have a lot of questions about whether they might be best for your organization or not. Here’s a list of some of the most common questions asked related to command centers.
What’s a command center?
A command center is a secure room in a facility that provides centralized control, monitoring, and command of a situation. As mentioned in the introduction, many different organizations utilize command centers. One example would be the military. You’ve probably seen military or government TV shows that show a group of people in one room monitoring and managing an unfolding crisis. Similarly, in real life, military personnel use a command center to do actions such as planning and coordinating attacks or organizing defense strategies. In addition to the military, corporations use command centers as well. They utilize them to monitor their IT infrastructure or keep up to date with information resources in real time. These information resources could include relevant news feeds or social media accounts.
Typically, corporations will have three different command centers set up for them. They use one for marketing, one for IT, and one for security. In the event of disasters such as forest fires and mass shootings, state and local governments use command centers to coordinate responses with firefighters, police, and the city manager. Energy and utility organizations can utilize command centers to maintain safe operating conditions, watch their resources, and respond to emergencies. In mass transportation organizations, command centers are critical to minimize any risk of hazards through enhancing fast communication between hubs. This fast communication helps to ensure trams, trains, buses, airlines, and other forms of mass public transportation are safely traveling to their destination. From federal agencies to emergency services, the list can go on when it comes to the number of groups that utilize this tool in their operations.
What kind of command center should be used?
The kind of command center that a business or organization may need will depend on the resources that need to be coordinated. If a city were to put together a command center, they would count how many different agencies they would need to have in the facility at the same time. They would also calculate the number of people from those agencies that would be needed and estimate the appropriate size for their facility. Another aspect to consider beyond capacity is the pieces of information that will need to be monitored. Examples of information that could be monitored include phone calls, radio communications, TV feeds, data, cameras, and other information relevant to your organization. Additionally, you should decide whether you’re going to have a command center built or if you’ll be modifying an existing space to use as your facility.
How does the construction of a command center work?
You first need to choose a location or space that will provide enough room for your team, your communications equipment, the display technology, and other command center furnishings to do the required work. There should be adequate space for all of your command center operators to view a giant video wall and work in smaller groups. If you have limitations in physical space, you can opt for large format displays, projection, or a smaller video wall. In particular, when you’re building your command center from scratch, it’s necessary to consider the size of the display area and number of operators and workstations that will be using the facility. A typical command center will usually have a main command center area, back rooms for meetings, and support spaces.
Is more than one command center necessary?
It depends on what kind of operations you’re running. Certain groups such as a small county, city, or regional energy company could do fine with just having one small command center. The same would be the case if your operations involved monitoring news and social media. Larger groups such as the military, federal government agencies, or utility companies may require multiple large facilities to monitor and coordinate complex events. It will all depend on the number of people involved in your command center, and the number of actions that will be controlled or monitored.
How should the command center be equipped?
How you choose to equip the command center will be based on the type of information that you need to be distributed throughout your facility. Let’s take visual information as an example. If that’s going to be a critical part of your operations, you might want to have a video wall for all of your operators to see the data that’s coming in. The right video wall is determined by the wall space, the layout of the room, viewing distance, and the number of input sources you’ll want to be viewed simultaneously. An audiovisual integrator will need this information to determine technical options such as aspect ratio and pixel density to set up the proper display wall configuration. You may also decide you want satellite connections and interactive video conferencing flowing in and out of the command center. If you want these functions as an option, you’ll also have to consider whether to cross-connect any of these means of communication or not. A qualified integrator will then be able to choose the right equipment and configurations to give you these functions.
The software will be another issue to plan out. It might be required for your phone system to do call routing. If you plan on using a phone system and radio, you’ll need a program that can manage them simultaneously. An example of this simultaneous use is when police and firefighters on radios are able to communicate with public works employees using phones. As you’re planning everything, be sure to keep in mind how the work environment can be set up to function effectively. Different people operating your command center will need to see different things, which makes it necessary to set up screens to be positioned in a way that supports everybody’s needs. If you have certain groups of people in your organization collaborating, you should have them positioned in an area that lets them see the same things and be able to communicate efficiently. The facility should be set up for proper viewing angles, screen height, seat height, room lighting, temperature control, and preventing obstructed views.
Who should manage the command center’s design?
You want to have a committee representing your various stakeholders’ needs and providing input when it comes to design, construction, and furnishing of command centers. One example of stakeholders to seek input from is your internal resources, such as your command center operators, emergency managers, and supervisors. You should also get input from your external resources, such as your architects, interior designers, your information technology and audiovisual integrators, and general contractors. The internal project manager will vary depending on the purpose of the center. Internal project managers could be the fire chief, the city manager, or a military commander responsible for a particular center on base. Whoever is decided to be the leader of the team will be responsible for developing a process to determine the command center’s ideal output and how staff will coordinate all activities within the facility.
How does the maintenance of a command center be handled?
As you’ve learned so far, a command center is a critical function of an organization. Because of that, a command center needs to maintain 100% uptime during real-world operations and planned exercises. Your organization can develop and implement a program for repair, support, and maintenance to help ensure the center maintains the required optimal performance and uptime. The program would involve meeting specific maintenance requirements, performing regular preventative maintenance, and conducting standard operating procedures. In some cases, a command center may need to have a planned outage upgrade or make changes. It’s helpful to have a backup command center to be able to take your primary command center completely offline during the maintenance period. It also gives your organization a chance to test out the backup command center to see that it can function properly during unexpected outages. If you don’t have an alternative or backup command center, the proper preparations must be in place to bring your primary command center back online as quickly as possible during emergencies.
These are some of the many questions that often get asked when it comes to setting up a command center. Creating the right facility for command operations requires determining what your organization’s individual needs are. Once you’ve determined your needs, you can start planning out whether you’ll build a command center or modify an existing room to perform the functions of one. If you have more questions about command centers, you can learn more information about them at Craftsmen ind.
