IT for Facilities Managers
Published October 17, 2007 at 2:31 pm · Filed under Features
If you thought access control systems were only good for securing buildings, think again. The latest systems, like the Impro64+ from BPT, give customers a powerful off-the-shelf tool for controlling everything from time and attendance to car park barriers and machinery.
When combined with gates and barriers, the Impro64+ doesn’t just control who enters and leaves a car park. It can also monitor and restrict parking bays so that organisations can limit the number of vehicles in a lot and if necessary apply departmental quotas.
Access control systems can also be used for time and attendance recording, allowing a construction company, say, to monitor who is on-site and for how long. A piece of software for the Impro16 access control system allows this information to be transmitted to contractors’ payroll systems so that they can produce time sheets and other reports by individual, department or company.
Even basic time and attendance functions can be made more sophisticated if combined with access control. For example, the system could be set to require a ‘Reason Code’ before an employee leaves his area during working hours, giving management an accurate picture of who is leaving, for how long and why.
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Power cuts
Another useful feature of Impro64+ software is the ability to reduce energy bills by controlling power to specific zones or appliances, such as heating/air conditioning systems, PCs and factory equipment.
IN and OUT readers placed at the entrance to a zone (and configured to support strict anti-pass back control) can count everyone who enters or leaves, turning the power on when the first person arrives and off when the last person leaves.
Businesses with facilities that are in operation 24 hours day can cut energy consumption using PIRs, which turn power on in specific areas when movement is detected, or long range readers placed in corridors that read the employee’s access control cards from up to a metre away and activate power in the zone ahead.
The ability to turn electricity on or off also has safety benefits. Fitting heavy machinery with a keypad reader linked to an access control system would allow you to restrict usage to authorised employees.
In certain environments an access control system can even be used to generate income. A busy theme park, for example, could set up a ‘fast track’ system under which visitors paid more to jump the queue on more popular attractions. Instead of extra staff to deal with the fast trackers, you could install an Impro64+ access control system on the turnstiles and set the reader on the fast track turnstile to only accept tags pre-programmed with the fast track code.
It is clear from this brief overview that today’s access control systems have numerous uses beyond their primary purpose and provide an elegant solution to a wide range of business challenges.
