Bosch Security Systems BV - Vancouver International Airport

Company Bosch Security Systems BV
Date 19.11.2012

Vancouver International Airport in Canada’s westernmost province of British Columbia annually handles ca. 300,000 flights carrying over 17 million passengers flying on any of 62 different airlines and has been named the best airport in North America for the last three years in a row. Putting customer-services to the top of priorities, Vancouver International Airport decided upon the installation of the second-largest-ever Bosch Praesideo system which was completed in 2011. This system aided the Vancouver Airport Authority in meeting its ongoing objective to provide ever-improving service to its customers while also reducing its operating and maintenance costs.

To provide necessary functionality for airline ground personnel, customer service, and airport operations, the contractor, Sound Dymax of Toronto, designed a system comprised of 12 fully integrated PA systems containing 300 amplifier channels, to cover three terminals containing 250 distinct paging zones.  The system design arrived by Dymax (with support from SimpleWay and Bosch) and took advantage of the opportunities to combine essential functions onto a common infrastructure. Airport-wide announcements can be broadcast overall – in eight different languages with the option to add even more – with Praesideo enabling the prioritization of such announcements based on their urgency or importance. In addition, zone-specific announcements, such as flight- or gate-specific boarding instructions, are routed using the same network.

The Bosch Praesideo system also provides a key element of functionality required by the customer: system supervision.  At Vancouver International Airport, this function is implemented via direct feeds to each amplifier. Following completion of the system installation, the supervision capabilities of the Praesideo system revealed its essential benefit. The system on-line circuits exposed numerous shorts and grounds in the existing speaker and wiring installation. With the detailed fault information generated by Praesideo, the airport staff acted according to a perfectly outlined working-map that granted no time-loss and best results. This demonstrates one key customer goal that has been achieved by the system’s efficiency: saving time and money. Another major benefit of the system is the gate agent feature. With the touch of a single button, an agent can begin the boarding process using the pre-recorded  -if required multilingual- announcements. In reality, most boarding processes can be performed by one gate agent, which is a significant cost saving, as it frees up the gate agents so they can focus on their first priority, providing customer service and support.

Since completion of the project in October of 2011, the customer has expressed a very high level of satisfaction with the performance and benefits of the new system. “The installation has been very, very successful,” stated Dave Parson, of the Vancouver Airport Operations Group. “The stability of the Praesideo-based system has been excellent, as has the ease of use and access to system data and records. And not only for us, but for the 60,000 passengers who hear their boarding and baggage arrival announcements through the system every day.”

Contact

Bosch Security Systems BV
P.O. Box 11 11
Grasbrunn
Germany
D-85626
  • 49 89 6290-1647