Broadgate, in the heart of the City of London, is among the UKs largest business communities with 14 office buildings, 4.4 million sq ft and 30,000 occupiers.
The estate includes the City’s fourth tallest building, the Broadgate tower, which was completed in 2009 at an estimated cost of GB pound 240 million.
For the last 15 years the entire estate has been protected by Grosvenor Technology’s JANUS access control system. With all of the office buildings existing as structurally independent, and ranging in size from 78,000 sq ft to 419,000 sq ft, managing Broadgate’s access control represents a significant security challenge with multiple turnstile and barrier access points.
A flexible access control system with a resilient distributed architecture is therefore fundamental to the needs of Broadgate. The long-term relationship between Grosvenor Technology and Broadgate has not just been about the functionality of the system, but also about the commitment to product development, support and compatibility.
There are now over 300 entry points across the estate including parking access and building entrances that use the JANUS system.
Individual office areas in each building often use their own security equipment including access control. Grosvenor has developed an innovative multiplexer interface that allows a single swipe card to be used both on JANUS and third party systems. This means building users only require a single card to gain access to the public areas, such as car parks, as well as their own offices
There are security teams for each of the 14 buildings in Broadgate, all of which monitor the security for their own areas, including issuing replacements for lost or stolen cards.
The system is also integrated with fire, building management systems and alarm monitoring helping to ensure fast and safe evacuation of the buildings in the event of an emergency.
The integration goes further though: when someone enters a building and presents their access card to a reader adjacent to the lifts, the JANUS system will inform the lift controller of the floor on which the employee works. That person will then be directed to the most suitable lift for the quickest access to that floor.
To ensure redundancy in the event of power or network outages each card reader is connected to an Intelligent Door Controller (IDC) that can control two doors/locks and interface to a wide range of industry standard card readers and lock mechanisms. IDC’s are networked to the JANUS Server either via serial communications or an IP network. Every card profile associated with a specific IDC is downloaded to the controller to ensure continued operation in the event of a network or power failure.
In the last 15 years, Grosvenor has worked closely with Broadgate to ensure safe and secure access to an estate that was founded in the 1980s with the aim of providing high-specification office space for the Square Mile.
Today the very latest JANUS system installed is fully capable of incorporating the first JANUS equipment installed over 15 years ago.
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