South West College, the largest Further Education College in Northern Ireland, has selected SALTO and its partner company Doorways Architectural to provide the access control solution for its new multi-million-pound Erne Campus.
Located in the communities of Tyrone and Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, the College is physically represented at campuses in Cooks town, Dungannon, Enniskillen and Omagh. It employs over 900 full-time and part-time staff servicing around 18,000 enrolments and, with a turnover of £41m, makes a major contribution to the local and regional economy.
The new campus, which is situated on the site of the former Erne hospital in Enniskillen will open its doors to students and staff later this year having been delayed due to Covid-19, and will deliver additional first class facilities and accommodation for students and staff at South West College.
It will see the delivery of the first educational building worldwide to achieve the highest international standard in environmental construction – Passive House Premium. The application of the passive house standard is still quite new in the UK and in particular Northern Ireland ranking it alongside prestigious buildings such as the Apple Campus 2 in terms of sustainable innovation and design, and it is also designed to achieve a BREEAM outstanding rating, confirming the college’s commitment towards sustainability.
What did they need?
To ensure the safety and security of its students, staff and visitors the college needed a modern access wire free control solution that was future proof to allow for any future expansion and provide full control over who could access what, where and when. In addition, any proposed solution had to be easy to install, simple to operate, be able to grant access rights instantly and revoke them in real-time if and when required and provide full audit trail functionality.
To meet this brief Tracey brothers Ltd, the main contractors constructing the new campus, commissioned SALTO partner Doorways to supply and install the new access control system.
Solution and benefits
Robert McNeill, Doorways Sales Manager, comments “Having made the decision to standardise access control on the SALTO solution, installation got underway with some 100 plus doors being secured. Product fitted includes SALTO XS4 One handle sets, mortise locks with projecting latches, strike plates, and simple to use SALTO BLUEnet software.
This provides high level real-time access control throughout the campus allowing system administrators to manage doors and user keys in just a few easy steps, and in real-time. A SALTO Virtual Network (SVN) was also installed which provides the flexibility for the campus’s access control system to grow as required.”
Controlling access plays an important role in the security of any educational building and SALTO’s innovative, wire-free technology allows stand-alone electronic locks to read, receive and write information via their operating smart cards. And, at a later date if the client chooses, they can also incorporate the use of JustIN Mobile technology making it easy and secure to incorporate smart phones as a part of their on-campus access control solution.
A spokesperson for South West College said “Security is of paramount importance for all our students and staff. Doorways and SALTO understood our requirements to be successful – secure and safe. We needed a system where our new campus buildings felt safe but where our students have a sense of freedom – and our new SALTO technology provides that.”