What a Communication Point Needs to Deliver Every Day

A help point on a station platform, a call station in a car park, a speaker on a plant perimeter: nobody notices them, until the one moment they have to work. What should operators expect from them on an ordinary day?

By: Andreas Hrdlicka, COO, Commend CEE; E-mail: a.hrdlicka@commend.at

Invisible by Design

You never notice a help point on a station platform. Until you need it. That is what good communication looks like: invisible every day, and ready in the one moment that matters.

The difficulty is that “ready” cannot be switched on when the emergency arrives. A system used only in an emergency is a system nobody trusts, because nobody has tried it. Staff forget how it works, visitors do not know how to use it, and faults can go unnoticed. A system used every day, for a lost child, a question at the gate, a routine announcement, stays known, tested and trusted. Everyday use is not a side benefit of emergency communication. It is the precondition.

Four Channels, Four Questions

A communication point does its job when four channels work together, and when they work on an ordinary day, not only in an emergency.

Seeing. Does the system show what is happening? The person who calls should see that the call has arrived, and the person who answers should see the situation, not only hear a voice. Test question: when someone presses the button, does anyone know where, and why?

Hearing. Is every message understood, also in noise, in a tunnel, in a crowd, or by someone with impaired hearing? Clear audio is a question of speech intelligibility, not of volume. For many people sound alone is not enough: a visual signal, such as a light that confirms a call or marks an alert, carries the same message, and so does text on a display. Test question: would a person standing there actually understand it?

Speaking. Can the person at the point talk back? A button that only sends a signal leaves the caller alone with the uncertainty. Two-way speech turns an alarm into a conversation, and in a conversation the operator can assess, calm and direct. Test question: does a real person answer, and how quickly?

Interacting. Can anyone operate it without instructions, under stress, in a language they do not speak? A clear button, a clear confirmation, where useful a touch screen that guides the caller. Where several languages meet, live translation helps: the caller speaks their own language, the operator hears and reads theirs, and the reply goes back the same way. Test question: could a first-time user manage it, whatever language they speak?

Each channel alone is a component. Together they make a point that sees, is heard, speaks and can be operated, and these four are what an operator should check when buying, commissioning and auditing, and what everyday use proves again and again. One requirement runs across all of them: the point must fit into the surrounding systems, such as video surveillance, access control and alarm management, so that a call reaches the right team with the right information.

There is also a practical argument for treating both purposes as one. When daily communication and emergency alerting run on separate systems, the operator maintains, tests and trains twice, and the emergency system is the one used least, and therefore known least. One infrastructure that serves both keeps the emergency function in constant use, and every ordinary call becomes a small proof that it still works.

What Regulation Is Asking For

Regulation points in the same direction. The EU directive on the resilience of critical entities (CER, Directive (EU) 2022/2557) applies in every member state and requires operators, in Article 13(1), to have risk and crisis management procedures and protocols, including alert routines. Croatia is among the countries that have already made it national law: the Act on Critical Infrastructure (Zakon o kritičnoj infrastrukturi, Narodne novine 89/2025) has been in force since June 2025. Slovenia, for example, passed its Act on Critical Infrastructure (ZKI-1) in late 2024. In July 2026 the European Commission published non-binding guidelines (C/2026/3712) with 94 points in seven sections. One of them calls for crisis communication protocols with multi-channel communication, including redundant systems, adapted to different audiences, including multiple languages and accessibility requirements.

Documentation is the starting point. It makes operators ask how processes are structured and how operations should run. But the real test is whether the routine is used on an ordinary day. A protocol on paper does not tell you whether the speaker is audible, whether the call is answered, or whether a fault would be noticed.

A Self-Test for Operators

1. If someone presses a call point on your site right now, does a real person answer, check what is happening, and know where to send help?
2. Is your alert routine used every day, or does it only exist on paper?
3. If it stopped working tomorrow, would anyone notice before the next real incident?

If the answers are uncertain, the place to start is not a new system but an ordinary day: go to the point, press the button, and see, hear, speak and interact the way a stranger would.

Sources

1. Directive (EU) 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on the resilience of critical entities, Official Journal L 333, 27.12.2022, Article 13(1)(c) and Article 26(1): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2022/2557/oj
2. Zakon o kritičnoj infrastrukturi, Narodne novine 89/2025 (adopted 6 June 2025, in force since 21 June 2025): https://narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeni/2025_06_89_1232.html
3. Zakon o kritični infrastrukturi (ZKI-1), Uradni list RS, št. 102/24 (3 December 2024)
4. Communication from the Commission, Guidelines on the application of Article 13(5) of Directive (EU) 2022/2557 on the resilience of critical entities (C/2026/3712), Official Journal C, 13.7.2026, point 63: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:C_202603712