Over the course of its history, the Lawrence Livermore has strengthened national security with a tradition of science and technological innovations — anticipating, developing, and delivering solutions for the nation’s most challenging problems. With its talented and dedicated workforce, world-class research capabilities, and missions reaching across biosecurity, counterterrorism, defense, energy, intelligence, nonproliferation, science, and weapons, LLNL has been making the world a safer place for more than 65 years.

Problem:

Lawrence Livermore, like most organizations, faces the unavoidable challenge of properly accounting for everyone in their facilities. “Personnel accountability was handled in a single location, a marker board, in each facility, and we needed to be able to account for personnel working in multiple locations with multiple entry points,” says Robert Hazy, Process Control Engineer at LLNL.

The straw that broke the camel’s back ended up being the arrival of COVID, and as protocols emerged that dictated the elimination of common touch points, the search for a system that could replace LLNL’s marker boards and meet their unique needs began.

Search:

As Lawrence Livermore started looking for a solution, they knew that they were looking for a US-based company that they could trust. With Michigan roots and a long history of working with local governments, municipalities, state and federal agencies, and military organizations, Savance Workplace was a perfect fit.

Throughout their search, one of the biggest dealbreakers Lawrence Livermore came across with other options was that they needed a solution that they could host on-premise. As they searched Google for electronic sign in boards, they realized that almost every alternative was cloud-based and required an internet connection. Since Savance Workplace can be either cloud-hosted or hosted on-premise, LLNL was able to keep their network and facilities locked down with an on-prem solution that they could trust. “We needed the software to maintain our FIPS compliance, and Savance made sure that we were able to accomplish that,” explains Hazy.

Solution & Implementation:

Working with Savance, Lawrence Livermore was able to replace their marker boards with custom-designed status boards in each facility. “Lawrence Livermore was very specific when it comes to the status board they were envisioning.” says Sofia McClure, who was the Graphic Designer assigned to the LLNL project. “They knew exactly what they needed to achieve better visibility at their facilities, and we worked together to make sure their vision was brought to life.”

After working through a handful of different options for the design of the status board, Lawrence Livermore decided on a design that gave them complete visibility of all residents, non-residents, and visitors; along with a real-time count of the number of cleared and uncleared personnel present, and a feed for important news and announcements. In addition to the status boards, Savance also designed a Visitor Management kiosk design, custom-branded to LLNL, for easy visitor self check-in.

“The design team works very hard to provide a solid, workable solution.” says Hazy. “The final, customized product makes for a very elegant welcome as employees and visitors enter our facilities.”

The Savance technical team had a great time working on the LLNL project. “I enjoy working with guys like him”, says Robert Joseph, DevOps Engineer at Savance. “Some people would say, ‘he’s sharp as a tack’, but Robert Hazy is sharp as a katana. He keeps up with me on software concepts in ways I couldn’t keep up with him on organic chemistry.” Hazy couldn’t help but sing praises of Robert Joseph and the implementation process. “He’s one of the good ones,” he says.

Results & Benefits:

For Lawrence Livermore, one of the greatest benefits of implementing Savance Workplace was being able to extend the functionality of the system to solve additional problems tied into safety, security, and accountability of their personnel.