The Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) is a research and teaching centre at Aberystwyth University, Wales, on the Penglais and Plas Gogerddan campuses.
A requirement for both project briefs was low energy use and sustainable design, to reflect the nature of the scientific research and the university’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hence sedum roofs, rainwater harvesting, natural ventilation and sustainable timber cladding with a biomass boiler at Gogerddan and ground source heat pumps at Penglais – all of which helped the project achieve a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating and win two BRE national sustainable design awards.
To control access at both facilities, the university specified a SALTO smart access control system which was supplied, installed and commissioned by SALTO Certificated Partner LOCK-TECH SYSTEMS, of Swansea.
Working with the university and building contractor Willmott-Dixon, a UK privately-owned capital works company, LOCK-TECH installed a range of doors for the various teaching rooms, laboratories and public spaces. The university does not have the worry and cost of managing keys, or changing lock cylinders, but can now update, restrict or deny access to any lock remotely. This gives flexibility and a secure yet accessible site for the staff and students whilealso allowing controlled visitor access, the firms say.
Both sites used a number of SALTO XS4 Mifare proximity handle sets plus hard-wired off-line wall readers with one on-line update point connected to the university’s Ethernet network in reception to take advantage of the SVN network feature.
This allows the XS4 locks to read, receive and write information via the university’s staff and student access control fobs. Since most access related information is kept encrypted on these fobs, the wall readers can update and receive information from the fobs at any time. The makers say their product provides 90pc of the benefits of a fully on-line access control system at the cost of a standalone system.
The ‘smart’ fobs, which are in the process of being supplemented by Mifare proximity cards, build up audit trails through normal use giving the university control over access and enabling them to log movement of staff, students and visitors through the off-line and on-line parts of the system if required. This enables an access profile of each individual to be established and updated at the update wall readers as necessary.
Any fobs that become lost or stolen can be deleted from the system, by visiting the readers with up-dated fobs. The system also reduces the number of visits necessary to off-line doors, since user data is transferred on fobs by normal use. This eliminates the traditional need to replace locks if security is breached due to the loss or theft of a fob or card.
