Force 5
Human Performance Shaping Tools that Drive Regulatory Compliance for Visitor Management Control

The landscape of the power utility industry is shifting to a more risk-based approach. An increase in compliance violations linked to manual processes has emphasized the need for this. Presently, visitor management is one of the most violated regulatory requirements in the U.S. Many utility companies have relied on antiquated, manual, and labor intensive processes, such as paper log books, to manage and collect information about visitors. This information is required by NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Safety Regulations in order to provide security, safety and protection of the Bulk Electric System (BES). “Lack of technical controls and proliferation of manual processes are leading to higher impact and greater likelihood of compliance violations,” states Mike Almeyda, Account Manager - Security and Compliance Offerings at Force 5. “As a former SERC CIP Auditor and Power Utility Compliance Manager, I can tell you from experience that the guaranteed way to reduce this type of inherent risk exposure is through implementing human performance shaping tools. At Force 5, we help our clients embed this strategy in their compliance culture and deploy it throughout their organization.” Founded in 2000, this Miami-based firm offers unique Enterprise Risk Management Solutions for the Power and Utility industry—designed to provide audit-ready evidence, constant situational awareness, actionable point of enforcement and persistent risk assessment.

Force 5’s Gatekeeper is a single unified platform built to meet the needs of power utilities.

This robust solution enhances compliance-based evidence and forensics needed in an Enterprise Risk Management Solution for real-time risk analysis and audit-ready reporting. Gatekeeper helps businesses sustain regulatory compliance while mitigating operational risk. It eliminates the error prone practice of manual logging and provides improved situational awareness through dashboard monitoring, alerting, electronic logging, and ad-hoc reporting.

Built specifically to meet CIP regulatory compliance requirements, Force 5’s Gatekeeper implements an Escort Centric workflow that combines physical access logging with identity management and validation. This self-service visitor management solution, consisting of a touch-screen kiosk, corporate access card, camera and biometric reader, validates that an escort has the proper credentials in place according to CIP Reliability Standards and captures data from the visit required for CIP Audits. “Gatekeeper mitigates risk by providing the complete history and audit trail of a visit, allowing organizations to manage not only their escort and visitor identities, but objects like physical keys,” adds Almeyda. Moreover, Gatekeeper is a single unified platform that provides clients with point of entry compliance for OSHA regulations (self-services & guard assist), and helps utilities monitor, log, muster, enforce, alert (email, SMS, Voice) and track at their facilities points of entry.

To enhance point of entry compliance for OSHA regulations, Force 5 developed the Perimeter enForcement Building (PEB) to provide both a temporary and/or long-term structure for secure perimeter access logging. The PEB is equipped with Gatekeeper kiosks in order to accelerate, consolidate, and optimize the onsite access process. They are also fitted with Force 5’s Mobile Muster Kiosks to increase the situational awareness of a facility with a real-time roster of visitors in case of an emergency.

The entire Gatekeeper platform provides a unique, self-service platform that is “Always Audit Ready.” Its architecture delivers a distributed implementation where local systems sync back to an archival server, ensuring enterprise availability. These solutions have significantly improved the compliance posture of our clients by helping them move away from error-prone, manual logging processes to automated and efficient escort centric electronic logging. “We had no violations or self-reports after Gatekeeper, and that log remediation is done in minutes instead of weeks, and when needed it is done proactively,” says one of Force 5’s clients.

Force 5 has been solving client problems for over 15 years, with effective technology solutions and a proven track record of success. Our professional services deliver business value, mitigate risk, and help companies successfully meet regulatory and audit requirements.