In what at one time would have been considered science fiction, facial recognition video surveillance and building automation have become old hat for S&T Technologies.
The 40-year-old company is headquartered in Sault Ste. Marie and has maintained an office in Greater Sudbury for 25 years.
On June 13, they held the grand opening for their local relocated office, now stationed in Val Caron, at 2996 Highway 69N, Unit 3.
“We had the opportunity to gain storefront and more traffic,” supervisor Steve Watson told Sudbury.com during Thursday’s grand opening celebration.
“We saw a need for more residential and commercial security, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to have more traffic and advertising to expand our workforce here.”
In addition to video surveillance and building automation, the contractor’s scope of work includes such things as network cabling, IP phone systems, fibre optics and related services.
Building automation has changed a great deal during the company’s 40 years, founder and the “S” in S&T, Andrew Sarlo, told Sudbury.com.
(Fellow co-founder Dennis Tatasciore is the “T”.)
“We were forward-thinking with data-comms from the beginning,” he said. “The whole industry has changed many times since then.”
From a proposed future to a reality in which technology aligns with their vision, they’re now able to control building functions from a control room or within an automated system.
Where they used to set timers to turn on building services such as electricity, boilers, water flow and air flow, they can now be automatically triggered by occupancy and activity within the building.
These services became all the more important during the pandemic, Watson said, noting that as sections or entire floors of buildings were shut down for long periods of time their automated systems have allowed them savings in building operations.
The system they installed in the Government of Canada building at 19 Lisgar St., for example, allowed them to regulate various systems throughout the building, Watson said.
“When they went through the pandemic they had whole floors shut down, so we could shut down what they didn’t need and saved a ton of money,” he said, adding that tailoring building operations from area to area instead of the same service across the “building envelope” not only saves money, but is more environmentally friendly.
“Unless you have the control of your building, you’re going to run your heat wide open, your building wide open and not really what you need.”
The company has four employees working out of the new Val Caron office, but hopes to expand this as the local market grows.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs at Sudbury.com.
