Brivo Systems, a provider in Web applications for access control and security systems, announced that Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) of Quincy, Massachusetts has installed Brivo ACS WebService in nine of its campus buildings. The Web-enabled solution provides enhanced security for students, staff and faculty while offering ease of management from any computer on or off the university network.
Brivo Systems, a provider in Web applications for access control and security systems, announced that Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) of Quincy, Massachusetts has installed Brivo ACS WebService in nine of its campus buildings. The Web-enabled solution provides enhanced security for students, staff and faculty while offering ease of management from any computer on or off the university network.
Located on Boston's historic south shore, ENC recently celebrated its 100th birthday. ENC has about 1,200 students in its traditional residential undergraduate program, adult studies and graduate program. “Our old access control system had reached a state where it was unreliable and even failed completely during the last week of the semester,” said Charlie Burt, ENC Director of Information Technology. “We did an RFP seeking a system that would serve our needs well into the future. We wanted a solution that would be easy to get up and running; I wanted the maintenance off our hands; and we had to have a system we could rely on.”
"We didn't want to worry about the ‘upgrade game,' and we wanted a next generation solution. After evaluating several options, they all looked pretty much like what we had. Brivo offered something different. What's more, with Brivo we were able to use 99 percent of our existing cards and all our card readers including the existing wiring. The system was installed to cover more than 24 doors in nine buildings in a few short weeks prior to the fall semester. After ironing out a few network issues, the students didn't even notice a difference, except one — the new system worked faster and better,” said Burt.
Brivo ACS WebService manages access for five dorms, the library, gymnasium, and science building. Burt and the Risk Management team have established 13 different groups from among the ENC population with specific access privileges for the different buildings. During extended holiday breaks, staff can disable access for all and create access rights for only those on campus. In other instances — dorms' open houses for example — the system administrator can easily set up new door schedules and access privileges to conform to that special event.
"We love the unlock schedule feature and the great thing is we have reduced key management issues. The system is very easy to use and very reliable, I can put one of these on your front door at home and if I decide at the end of day you don't get in, you don't,” said Burt.
Burt utilizes the Brivo ACS WebService alert feature to send him an e-mail and text message when AC power is lost and for other events, such as when a person should not be on campus, but that card has been scanned.
"Our goal was a reliable system that provided easy access and management. I love the Brivo interface, it works very well, and we're able to pull reports and get any data we need right away. We got all the functionality, ease of upgrades, reliability, and remote access we were looking for, and we can build this out in the future anywhere we have our network.”
Burt and ENC also got a taste of Brivo's superb commitment to customer service. "The Brivo staff member in charge of setting the access rights for all the doors worked on our project the night before he was leaving for vacation. He finished all the uploading in one evening and we never had a problem — I should have bought him lunch for a week,” Burt joked.