Every year, more than 11 million tons of cargo move through SeaPort Manatee on the coast of west central Florida.
Achieving and maintaining safe and secure operations is a primary concern. Effective security programs and technologies not only safeguard the people and cargo at the port, but they also help restrict the entry of dangerous or illegal materials; help prevent terrorist activity, piracy, and theft; and help protect cargo like oil tankers from harming the environment.
Maritime ports, however, can be difficult to secure due to their large size and complex infrastructure, which present numerous entry points for potential security threats. Multiple modes of transportation (e.g., ships, trucks, trains) and a high volume of goods moving through mean that ports like SeaPort Manatee often find it challenging to monitor and track all individuals and cargo entering and leaving the port. In addition, ports often have a diverse range of stakeholders, including government agencies, private companies, and international organizations, each with their own security protocols and priorities.
For more than a decade, the security team at SeaPort Manatee has partnered with Siemens to design, implement, and maintain comprehensive, integrated security technologies that align with the port’s processes and workflows. As this port has grown tremendously in recent years, it also outgrew its initial Siemens security platform, so the teams worked together to effectively refresh and redesign the port’s security technologies in ways that not only meet their needs today but also provide scalability for continued growth.
Upgrading and refreshing the security platform and technologies would thus enable SeaPort Manatee to better manage these workflows while also maintaining accountability, adding new functionality, and creating greater visibility into all port operations.
Understanding workflows
As teams from Siemens and SeaPort Manatee set out to redesign their security technology workflow, they began by taking a close look at their existing operations to understand the required steps for every type of person to enter the port. For example, when a visitor arrived at the security gate, they would present their government ID, such as their TWIC or driver’s license. An agent would manually enter the visitor’s details into the platform to create a visitor record and complete a visual verification to ensure that the photo matched the person. At the same time, the system would check to confirm that the ID was valid (i.e., it had not been reported lost or stolen). Then, the visitor paid any necessary fees for arriving at the port before meeting with a security escort if one was required.
This process could take as long as ten minutes at the visitor window; for a busy port managing hundreds of visitors per day, this process was no longer sustainable for SeaPort Manatee.
SiPass integrated + Siveillance Video = impressive situational awareness
The heart of SeaPort Manatee’s refreshed security technologies is SiPass integrated. This platform provides an interface to manage the port’s entire security operation, encompassing access card readers, cargo tracking, escort assignment and monitoring, live alarm handling, visual verifications, gate operations, fee collections, and email notifications.
Importantly, SiPass integrated works seamlessly with Siveillance Video, improving situational awareness throughout the port. Security operators can now monitor all vehicles at SeaPort Manatee from the gate to the visitor’s destination and every point in between.
What this means in practice, says SeaPort’s Director of Public Safety & Security, David St. Pierre, is that the SeaPort’s security officers can now investigate activities based on every visitor’s entry and exit. “If there’s someone I want to track, trace, and identify, I can start by getting a picture of them, their vehicle, and sometimes even their license plate. Then I can track that vehicle at various locations throughout the port; in many cases, I can even look at a truck bed and tell you what’s in it. We have so much detail about the comings and goings of everyone here,” he says.
Reduced processing time
The new integrated platform streamlines and automates routine security verifications, data capture, and fee transactions, allowing SeaPort Manatee to adapt some operating procedures in ways that free agents to focus on what matters most – making decisions, rather than data entry and software navigation.
And while the time savings have been a boon to SeaPort Manatee in terms both of visitor / cargo throughput, the more efficient workflow has had a positive impact on employee satisfaction as well. That is, instead of waiting for one member of the security force to radio another when it was time to accept or release a port visitor, employees now receive automated alerts on their smartphones, where they also receive a greater level of detail about each visitor than before.
Improving operations beyond security
Given the refreshed technologies, the new platforms generate a wealth of data that SeaPort Manatee leadership can use to improve both security and non-security operations. Today, the integration between SiPass integrated and the port’s point-of-sale system automatically creates a daily report of all transactions and payments, which is then shared with the finance team. Whereas this process was manual before, SeaPort Manatee notes that the detailed, automatic reporting not only provides more accurate and timely daily ledgers, but also reveals exactly how much more traffic and revenue the port generates on a given day.
