Rated by Ofsted as the top-performer in the West of England, the college has centers spread throughout the city and caters for more than 35,000 full-time and part-time students including 500 international students.
It decided to move from Magstripe to more secure Mifare/smart card technology and wanted a system with a mix of on-line and off-line stand alone wire free formats.
Bristol-based Gem installed off-line XS4 locks and a mix of on-line wall reader units from Salto Systems using the Salto Virtual Network.
The locks read, receive and write information via the college’s staff ID cards. Because most access related information is encrypted on these cards, the wall readers are able to receive and update information from the cards at any time.
The system is said to be easy to use and have 90 per cent of the benefits of a fully on-line access control system at the cost of a stand-alone system.
The ‘smart’ ID cards build up audit trails giving the college control over access and enabling them to track the staff, students and visitors. This enables a complete access profile of individuals to be established and updated as necessary at the up-date wall readers. ID cards that are lost or stolen can be deleted from the system by visiting the readers.
More than 300 new lock sets were fitted across the site.
Jim Caola, MD of Gem – a Salto Independent Business Partner – said: “Such has been the success of the installation that the security team is already considering upgrading their additional buildings in other locations around the city to Mifare enabled XS4 electronic handle sets as well as using it in future new projects.”
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