Commend Australia present in Scentre Group National Operations Centre

Scentre Group was looking to establish a National Operations Centre (NOC). With 40 Shopping Centres spread across Australia and New Zealand, Scentre Group saw an opportunity to centralize their car park operations to deliver a consistently high customer service experience across their car parks. With a centralised Control Room and trained staff the experience should be consistent and professional in delivery.

The NOC required a consolidated high availability solution to connect their disparate site technologies and support their Operators.

Having invested in Commend Intercom exchange and station equipment over the preceding years, the challenge was how to bring this equipment together in a logical way. The associated systems of the Car Parking environment were integrated together in an easy to understand FlinQ graphical representation for the operators. Integration of Intercom with CCTV and PARCs did not exist at the Car Parks before being connected to the NOC.

Westfield Shopping Centres are often the busiest of shopping precincts in any city and the need to keep disruption to a minimum is crucial when transitioning a remote site onto the Westfield Car Park Network. Detailed planning was required prior to each sites connection to the network.

The Solution

Scentre Group engaged Park Assist who worked closely with TKH Group sister companies Commend and Flexposure to deliver an integrated solution for their NOC. The purpose built facility offers the Control Room Operators audio connections and comprehensive visualisation of the networked system via the FlinQ GUI. The status of the Intercom, CCTV, and PARCs systems are all presented in real-time for the operators to deliver that consistently high level of service to the Car Park customers.

The backbone of the system is based on the VirtuoSIS head-end intercom server hosted on the Scentre Groups’ Virtual environment infrastructure. This virtual server is connected via Commend LAN networking technology in a star topology to the remote Westfield sites with the existing GE300 and GE800 intercom servers. Presently eleven shopping malls are connected to the system. The expectation is that over time all the Australian Westfield sites will be connected to the network.

The robust and proven nature of the field devices (e.g. intercom servers and stations) gave Scentre Group the confidence in its ability to perform for the NOC. While the high level of audio clarity was recognised by the Operators prior to the network roll-out. 

Brief Company Profile

Scentre Group is the owner and operator of Westfield, the largest shopping centre chain in Australia and New Zealand. Hosting some 11,670 retail stores within its’ 40 shopping centres.

Scentre Group was created on 30 June 2014 through the merger of Westfield Retail Trust and Westfield Group’s Australian and New Zealand management business. It combined the property interests of each of Westfield Retail Trust and Westfield Group in Australia and New Zealand and includes the industry leading operating platform with retail real estate assets under management valued at $43.3 billion and shopping centre ownership interests valued at $30.8 billion.

The shopping centres are highly productive, with strong franchise value and the ability to attract the world’s leading retail brands. They are an essential part of the community’s social and economic fabric. In 2015, over 525 million customers visited a Westfield shopping centre,
spending in excess of $22 billion.

"We are very pleased with the performance and stability of the overall platform – including Commend’s Virtuosis Server together with the pre-existiing Commend infrastructure at our Centres," said Mat Clee Senior Business Manager Parking.

About Commend

Commend is one of the world’s largest providers of high-end Security Communication systems. A member of worldwide security solution provider THK Group, Commend International was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Salzburg, Austria.

With app. 160 employees at its headquarters, Commend is well integrated into THK Group’s 4.800 worldwide staff and also maintains an international partner network of more than 400 people (spanning more than 40 countries ). The corporate culture has a strong focus on people and cooperative partnerships to ensure outstanding user value with systems known for their superior reliability, convenience and voice intelligibility / clarity of voice transmission.

Commend Control Desks and Intercom Stations for security communication solutions incorporate speech, video, data and third-party equipment control. They embrace the most useful networking and mobile technologies and serve millions of users every day, for example in the German automobile industry, at public transport services such as the London Underground, as well as numerous buildings, road traffic and parking facilities the world over.

Commend offers dedicated turnkey solutions for Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Parking, Lifts, Prisons, Police, Heavy Industry, Airport, Rail and Transport infrastructure, Military and many other Top Security communication applications.

For more information, visit www.commend.com.