On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, The Promenade Condominium is a residential high-rise luxury condominium with 191 units on 38 floors. It has New York views, a health club and pool. The building offers an outdoor jogging track and a fitness center, wrap-around roof terrace, conference room, party room, children’s playroom, billiard room, bicycle and storage room and a garage – all with controlled access. Building management holds keys for these areas as well as keys for each unit and uses KeyWatcher, the key control and management product from US manufacturer Morse Watchmans to secure, control and track keys.
Dominick Camilleri, Resident Manager at The Promenade Condominium, says: “Holding the keys in the KeyWatcher eliminates any issues of unmanaged access. The system works very well and over the years we have never had a problem.”
The Promenade’s original KeyWatcher was recently updated with the newer KeyWatcher Illuminated system, with the complementary KeyWatcher Key-Pro software for tracking key usage. The installation of the new system followed a technical evaluation that also included competitive products and, according to Mr Camilleri, the Morse Watchmans system was found to be superior.
He says: “The KeyWatcher Illuminated system was selected over the other brands because of its quality, performance, reliability and scalability. “Admittedly, we were spoiled by our past experience with the old KeyWatcher system. It really set the standard for our evaluation of a replacement system in terms of reliability and longevity.”
Similar in appearance to the original, the new KeyWatcher is built into a steel cabinet with illuminated key slots, seeking to make it easier to locate keys and maximise wall space. The illuminated two line by 16 character screen displays messages and user prompts for a variety of functions, including removal and replacement of keys. The cabinet is wired with a tamper-proof mechanism and alarms can be sent automatically via email to designated managers.
The Key-Pro software enables Mr Camilleri to monitor activity from any desktop connected to the network. He can also trace key movements by time, date and user code. The automated record keeping software can also help to reduce the number of man hours spent searching for keys or following up on incidents.
Mr Camilleri adds: “What we most like about the new system is the capability for tracking keys. For liability issues and other reasons, it is important for us to know and document the whereabouts of keys and the length of time that keys are out. The KeyWatcher gives us that information in an easy to read report. I would definitely recommend this product to other large facilities that need key control.” For more information visit www.morsewatchmans.com
