Over the past two days, Norris Inc. partnered with Vigilance Software while attending the semiannual NNECERAPPA Conference, hosted at the University of New Hampshire. NNECERAPPA, a mouthful of an acronym, stands for Northern New England Eastern Region of APPA: Leadership in Educational Facilities. This conference brings together education-facility professionals from all areas – security, operations, maintenance, engineering, construction, environmental services, sustainability, planning and development, over two days, to discuss the planning, maintenance, and operations landscape of the region’s educational institutions.

In addition to meeting with facility managers and administrators from all over Northern New England, we observed some of the cutting edge technology now available for making facilities greener, safer, and more efficient. At our booth, Jason Roberts, Vigilance Software CEO, along with Dan Gelinas, Norris Inc. Systems Integrator, have been demonstrating the power of Vigilance’s emergency notification system software in educational settings, and it’s ability to allow any authorized individual to send out an instant threat alert from their desktop, automatically distributing desktop, email, text message, and voice phone alerts, as well as triggering security protocols like building lockdown, and automatically contacting the appropriate stakeholders to help quickly mitigate crisis situations. It is always a rewarding experience to be able to show people advances in security operations that can help them increase their own facility safety.

There were also some very interesting educational sessions held yesterday that our team got to attend. Classrooms of the Future, discussed the move toward classroom design that enables an active learning process, while Prepare for a Large Scale Criminal Event Including Forced Entry Mitigation, gave specific steps that individuals can take to best protect themselves and others during crisis situations, such as an active shooter in the building. Both gave us additional insight as to the upcoming communication and security needs within educational facilities. As the conference comes to an end early this afternoon, we have to say it was a great success and learning experience, and Norris Inc. is looking forward to participating again in the future.