Safety and security company Convergint opens Renton facility

Global systems integrator Convergint has opened a new facility in Renton.

Convergint, a fire life safety and security systems integrator, moved to a new facility at 1100 Oakesdale Ave. SW in Renton, the only location for the company in the Puget Sound area. The Chicago-based company has approximately 12,000 employees in 45 countries.

The location’s general manager, Gary Googins, said system integrators are companies that work with technology partners to engineer, design, install and service the systems.

“On the fire life safety side it’s things like fire alarms,” Googins said. “We design the fire alarm, we install it and we test and service it on an annual basis.”

Googins said the security side of the business includes access control, video surveillance and intrusion detection.

“Our mission is really to protect people and property, especially when it comes to critical infrastructure, things like dams, water treatment plants, power grids, military installations, civil buildings like courthouses and jails,” Googins said. “We also help to protect vulnerable people. Think about hospitals, schools and higher education facilities.”

Googins said Convergint works mostly with businesses and government customers.

Googins said they were in a different office in Renton for 23 years, but they had outgrown the space. He said five years ago, they began operating out of a second location in Kent as well.

“That’s just inconvenient to have people in different buildings, especially 15 minutes apart from one another,” Googins said. “We didn’t want to be too far from Renton because that’s where our workforce is centered around.”

Googins said they built a permanent fire life safety and security experience center. He said their partners donated more than $250,000 worth of technology to show customers how the different systems work together.

“Our goal here is that any company that wants to see the latest and greatest in security technology, they can come to our office, they can book an appointment and they can get a full demo of all those solutions that we have,” Googins said. “It’s really a chance for people to try before they buy.”

Googins said some of the technology they have can take out the labor of running a security system such as having an AI program to comb through footage to identify an intruder after a break-in, instead of having a person review the security footage themselves. He said the solutions also allow people to quickly share evidence with email to authorities.

“Being able to use video surveillance as an investigative tool is amazingly more powerful when you have some of these other technologies running on it,” Googins said. “Being able to solve crimes faster and share information more rapidly, there’s a legitimate (return on investment) to crime prevention and crime solving.”

Googins said the security technologies they offer are in high demand.

“People are trying to do better to protect their property, to protest their assets, to protect their brand,” Googins said. “It’s definitely on the forefront of a lot of businesses’ minds right now.”