The problem. An industrial customer wanted to create an opening of roughly 1.5 x 1.5 metres in a fire wall. The environment was harsh: oily air, dirt, high temperatures and very limited installation space. Behind the wall, an industrial hammer was operating, and the foreman wanted to monitor its condition visually from his office.
The obvious assumption. The initial idea was a special fire protection gate with extremely tight installation conditions. There were only around 15 centimetres of headroom and roughly 12 centimetres at the side. Manufacturing, installation and approval would very quickly have pushed the cost well beyond 10,000 euros.
The real question. Did the customer actually need a gate? Or did he simply need a reliable visual connection between office and machine?
The solution. The recommendation was simple: no new opening in the fire wall, no custom gate, no structural effort. Instead, install a camera on the hammer side and a monitor in the office. Total cost: around 450 euros.
The lesson. Technical problems do not automatically require large technical systems. Sometimes the better solution is the one that addresses the actual need and leaves everything unnecessary out. That is where resilient advisory work in existing facilities begins.
: Jack Delano, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Collection. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress.