About GSMG · Rochester, New York
Security and life safety, engineered since 2011
Global Security Management Group is staffed by federally trained security experts, New York State licensed Professional Engineers, and subject matter experts across security, evacuation, life safety, intrusion, and controlled access.
- Formed in 2011, headquartered in Rochester, New York
- Every engineer is a NYS licensed Professional Engineer
- Our own fully redundant UL listed Central Station
- NYS Dept. of State licensed
Most security companies sell products. We are an engineering firm that installs them.
That is not a slogan, it is a description of who is on the payroll. Global Security Management Group was formed in 2011 and is staffed by federally trained security experts, Professional Engineers, and subject matter experts in the fields of security, evacuation principles and policies, life safety, intrusion, and controlled access.
We provide consulting services and design for life safety and mass notification systems, structured evacuation, and every other security discipline in between. In practice that means the person deciding where a device goes holds an engineering licence and a stamp, and the same firm is still standing there at commissioning to answer for it.
Licensed engineers
Six disciplines, one firm, one licence standard
All of our engineers are New York State licensed Professional Engineers, and they work across six disciplines rather than specialising in one and subcontracting the rest. That matters more than it sounds, because the genuinely difficult problems in this field almost always live at the seam between two systems that were bought from two different companies.
Zoning, supervision, and signal path redundancy designed for a commercial building rather than scaled up from something meant for a house.
Stamped fire protection drawings, battery and voltage drop calculations run rather than estimated, and the sequence of operations matrix that acceptance testing depends on.
Credential strategy chosen door by door, integration with the other systems, and the fire alarm interface that has to release egress on alarm and often quietly does not.
Camera positions selected for the image each one has to produce, with network design agreed with whoever runs your IT rather than presented to them afterward.
Environmental and building systems monitoring, including the computer and clean room conditions that cause considerably more losses in this region than intruders do.
Occupant emergency plans and shelter in place protocols, written by people who also design the employee alarm system the same federal standard requires you to maintain.
What we do
Consulting and design, through installation and commissioning
Life Safety
Fire alarm design, stamped drawings, installation, system takeovers, NICET inspections, and monitoring.
Fire alarmIntrusion
Commercial burglar alarm systems on UL certified equipment, monitored by our own Central Station.
Burglar alarmAccess Control
Proximity, PIN, and biometric credentials, dual verification, and managed day to day badging.
Access controlSurveillance
IP video designed around your network, with every position chosen for the image it has to produce.
Video surveillanceEvacuation Plans
Occupant emergency plans and shelter in place protocols, plus the notification system the rule requires.
Evacuation planningPhysical Security
All six systems designed as one integrated platform, from conception through commissioning.
Integrated systemsSCIF and SWE
Design, construction management, and accreditation documentation for secure facility projects.
Secure facilitiesCanine Security
Detection and patrol canines from proven bloodlines, with handler training and full program builds.
Working dogsWe also work in construction security, personnel security and pre employment verification, insider threat detection, and counterintelligence and cyber response, largely for cleared contractors and organizations with research worth protecting.
How we work with your AHJ
Code compliance is a relationship, not a submission
In the unfortunate event of a fire, a professionally designed fire alarm system is a central part of a building's life safety strategy. Our fire protection engineers work with building owners, developers, and government officials to deliver well conceived, code compliant systems including early detection and audible occupant notification, interfaced with the building's other fire safety features.
The GSMG fire team delivers those code compliant designs by working closely with clients, construction managers, and authorities having jurisdiction. Using a team approach we solve technical and administrative challenges while accommodating budget and schedule constraints, which is a considerably more useful posture than submitting a drawing set and waiting to find out what comes back.
Our life safety engineers draw on in-depth knowledge of fire alarm technology, interfaced building fire safety systems and equipment, and construction related issues, to assess, plan, design, and commission complex projects. Our fire design experts stay current with the International Code Council and National Fire Protection Association codes and standards development process, which puts us ahead of code changes rather than reacting to them, and gives us the regulatory history and intent behind a requirement rather than only its current wording.
- Working directly with your authority having jurisdiction
- Coordination with construction managers and other trades
- Technical and administrative problems solved together
- Budget and schedule treated as design constraints
- Current with ICC and NFPA code development, not just current code
- Assess, plan, design, and commission under one firm
What we hold
The credentials behind the drawings
Anybody can describe themselves as a security company. The items below are checkable, and they are worth asking any firm you are considering to produce for you. Most of the field will be able to produce fewer of them than you would expect.
Every engineer on staff. A stamp on a drawing is a licensed individual taking personal professional responsibility for the design, which is a materially different thing from a salesperson's signature on a proposal.
New York requires a licence to engage in the business of installing, servicing, or maintaining security or fire alarm systems. It is a fair question to put to anybody bidding your work.
Fully redundant, staffed around the clock, and owned rather than quietly subcontracted to a wholesale operation in another state that has never seen your building.
Test and inspection carried out by NICET continuing education technicians, with daily testing to confirm commercial fire alarm systems are in full working order rather than assumed to be.
Our philosophy
Three things we hold ourselves to
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01
Be ahead of the threat
GSMG is ahead of the threat by providing superior design, components, and installation. In practice that means designing for what a building will face rather than what it faced last year, and being straight with you when the answer is that something already installed is not going to hold.
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02
Secure people and assets
We strive to provide the best state of the art technology to protect your people and your facilities. In that order, because a system that protects a building while leaving the people inside it exposed has solved the easier half of the problem and called it finished.
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03
Committed to excellence
We guarantee exceptional customer service. In this industry the measure of that is simple enough: whether somebody answers when you call at an inconvenient hour, and whether the person who answers already knows your building.
Who we sit around the table with
Who we work with
The people who live with the consequences of a design decision for the next twenty years, and who usually inherited whatever is currently installed from somebody else.
Where a held certificate of occupancy is expensive every single day it stays held, and the fire alarm is frequently the last item standing between a building and its opening date.
Coordination against the other trades and against the inspection milestones, so the security and life safety scope stops being the thing that surprises the schedule.
Bringing us in while the drawings are still cheap to change, which is when almost every expensive problem on a project could still have been prevented for the cost of a conversation.
Directly, and early. Plan reviewers deal with a great deal of poor submittal work, and a complete package from a firm they recognise moves faster for reasons that are entirely rational.
When fire detection lands inside an electrical bid and scope of work package, we produce the detailed design so the number on the bid survives contact with the building. You keep the electrical work.
Common questions
Before you call
What does it actually mean that your engineers are licensed PEs?
It means a named individual holds a state licence and puts their seal on the design, accepting professional responsibility for it. That is enforceable in a way a company logo on a proposal is not. It also changes who is in the room during design: an engineer is arguing about calculations and code intent, where a product specialist is arguing about which panel to buy. Both conversations have their place, but only one of them determines whether the submittal passes.
What size projects do you take on?
From single floor buildings up to structures over one million square feet. The engineering discipline is the same at both ends; what changes is the coordination burden and the number of parties who have to agree. Small projects are not a distraction for us, and large ones are not unfamiliar.
Do you work outside Rochester?
Yes. We are headquartered in Rochester and work throughout Western New York, and our project work reaches considerably further than that, particularly on secure facility and cleared contractor engagements. If you are outside the region, ask. The answer is more often yes than people expect.
Do you monitor the systems you install?
Yes, through our own fully redundant UL listed Central Station, with landline and cell backup. That is deliberate rather than incidental. When a signal arrives at three in the morning, the people receiving it work for the same firm that designed the system and can see the same records, instead of reading a line item on a wholesale account.
Will you work on systems another company installed?
Regularly. We service any fire alarm system regardless of who put it in, and taking over commercial intrusion and access systems is ordinary work for us. A takeover rarely means replacing the equipment. It usually means somebody competent takes responsibility for it again, rebuilds the documentation, and moves the monitoring somewhere that answers.
Do we have to buy everything from you?
No. Plenty of clients start with one system and add others when the timing suits them, and some only ever want the engineering. What we would say is that the value of having one firm across all six disciplines shows up at the interfaces between them, and those interfaces are where separately purchased systems tend to fail quietly.
How do we start?
With a conversation and usually a walkthrough. You do not need a scope, a budget, or a clear idea of what is wrong. A great many of the organizations we work with arrive because an insurer, an auditor, or a board member asked a question nobody in the room could answer, and that is a perfectly reasonable place to begin.
See how we can improve your systems and plans
A walkthrough and an honest document at the end of it. No scope required, no obligation, and it costs nothing.