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Axel Trujillo

Sustema doesn't make desks

If you have ever found yourself calling 911, you have connected with someone whose official job title is a “telecommunicator”. They are the ones who connect first responders with the people who need them. These people are beyond essential, they are critical! As you can imagine, performing this job is stressful to say the least. There is lots of information that needs to be processed, which in turn means that to track everything, these people need a great amount of accurate information. In fact, these types of jobs, due to the nature of their importance, cannot afford to stop. Since the operators are glued to their station (these are not standard office desks), they must have a station that is as comfortable and versatile as humanly possible. For example, to counter the long hours these consoles (yeah, that’s what they are called!) need to be height adjustable, and their design must meet the highest ergonomic standards. You see where I am getting at?


Workspaces for control rooms like the ones in emergency dispatch centers need highly specialized furniture. The consoles used in any mission critical environment must fulfill these four requirements:

  1. They must support a great quantity of IT equipment (anything from 4 to 12 monitors, CPUs, KVMs, Rackmount equipment).

  2. They must be durable and sustain 24 hours shifts, all 7 days of the week, all 365 days of the year.

  3. They must include sufficient space for adequate cable management.

  4. They must prioritize health by implementing ergonomics principles.

So, you must be wondering, who makes this stuff? And most importantly, where can I buy one? Well, first, we manufacture these consoles right here in our not so little workshop in the heart of Montreal. On another occasion we will share with you the process our people follow to make the greatest setups for critical control rooms using nothing more than their wit, and a lot, and I mean it eh, a lot of steel.

As I recently learned, Sustema has more than 20 years of experience manufacturing specialized furniture for critical environments, or as I prefer to call it, we make the meanest setups I have seen. As for where you can buy them: well, you will not find them on Best buy, that is for sure. In fact, I am not sure how one goes about buying one of these consoles. For that I am going to have to ask one of my teammates, maybe I’ll ask Drew about it. So, expect another post on that topic. What I do know is that there is not a one size fits all. In fact, every project has some degree of customization, but since all the consoles are modular, then it is easy to build and adapt the control center to (in this case “your”) needs. So, if you want to have six monitors for your surveillance station that is not an issue. Oh, you want to have integrated heating for those cold months that are half a year here in Canada? No problemo. In fact, we can even add fans if you want to keep it cool. See what I did there?

I still need to learn more about the early days of the internet but what matters to you is that Sustema has been around for a long time. Since 1996 to be precise. The company is older than me! And I am fascinated by the evolution of their control rooms. Now, all games aside, it is important that you know that Sustema does not make desks. Remember, they are called consoles, or if you want to get technical, we manufacture specialized furniture for IT and mission critical environments.

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