Compass Offices secures its properties with a wireless access control solution from Salto Systems.
Compass Offices operates fully furnished business centers with serviced office space, meeting rooms and virtual office facilities. It has four locations in Hong Kong and two locations in Singapore.
Compass Offices secures its properties with a wireless access control solution from Salto Systems.
Compass Offices operates fully furnished business centers with serviced office space, meeting rooms and virtual office facilities. It has four locations in Hong Kong and two locations in Singapore.
In Hong Kong, the company installed a 56-door Mifare online wireless solution at its The Center location on 21F. Another 38 doors were equipped with the same system
at its 16F Man Yee premises.
The Center is one of Hong Kong's tallest structures and located in the Central business district. It is situated among major government, finance and banking headquarters and has access to the city's major underground rail stations. The Man Yee Building is also located in the heart of Central, and gives easy access to
Central MTR station, Hong Kong Airport Express Station and the ferry terminus.
The offices are used by customers looking for office space and services. Tenants include business professionals who require occasional or permanent office space, and small home-based businesses that need a respected address to create the right impression for customers. In all instances, a serviced office space can be rented on a monthly basis with access available 24x7.
Problem
As both locations were new buildings, the simplest solution provided to clients was mechanical keys. Right from the start, it was recognized as an unsatisfactory solution. The keys would have been lost or stolen. Another disadvantage was short-term clients taking their keys with them. This compromised security, which required replacing locks and issuing new keys. Mechanical access disrupted smooth business operations and incurred unwanted expense.
The answer was to install a more advanced method of access control, which removed the need for keys. It did not involve the disruption of fitting a networked cabled solution, which would have been intrusive and expensive.
Solution
With the help of Barwin Metal, the Salto distributor for Hong Kong, a flexible and cost-effective access control solution was devised.
A Salto wireless system used escutcheons to secure all doors on both sites. Without hard wiring and the need to drill holes in the doors, installation costs could be minimal, making it the perfect solution for the serviced office layouts in both buildings.
“The Salto wireless access control solution appealed to Compass Offices, as the number of users and doors the system can manage is unlimited. With the business expanding and an increasing number of staff and clients on-site every day, this scalable solution was what Compass needed,” said Alfred Wai, Sales Manager, Barwin Metal.
Wall readers were installed at main entrance doors at both sites, and the wireless escutcheons fitted for individual office entry. These were joined by a gateway and repeaters, which operate as a bridge between the gateway and other repeaters or locks. One gateway was required at each building, with five repeaters installed at The Center and three repeaters at the Man Yee Building.
Result
Doors can be wirelessly connected to the system thanks to its IEEE 802.15.4 at 2.4 GHz technology. The gateways and repeaters act as antennas, collecting and sending information to the stand-alone wireless locks. One gateway can manage several repeaters and electronic locks, minimizing infrastructure costs and maximizing flexibility.
With a single click, users can configure or make changes to the network in real time. They can monitor the network, download audit trails from the locks, delete users remotely and collect battery status of the RF locks from a control center. Thanks to its self-healing capabilities, if a lock loses RF connection, it will automatically scan for a new connection to an alternative gateway, maintaining security.