Brivo Systems , a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for security management, announced that the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, Bethesda, Maryland, has deployed Brivo WebService to increase safety and security at its metropolitan Washington D.C. campus. ResponseTECH is the integrator for the project.
Brivo Systems , a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for security management, announced that the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, Bethesda, Maryland, has deployed Brivo WebService to increase safety and security at its metropolitan Washington D.C. campus. ResponseTECH is the integrator for the project.
Stone Ridge is a Catholic, independent college preparatory school for girls, serving students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12. It is coed for day care, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. The school is located on a 35-acre campus and has an enrollment of more than 650 students, and 167 faculty and staff. The Brivo system is installed in eight of the school's 12 buildings.
"Before we installed Brivo, we had one of the competing access control systems," said Patty Myler, Director of Facility. "If I wanted to make a change in the system, I needed to send an e-mail with the requested change to our provider and then verify the change had been made that could take hours. With Brivo, for example, I've just been told there is a late meeting at the Upper school tonight; while we've been talking, I just changed the door schedule to accommodate that meeting."
Brivo WebService controls a total of 17 doors and keypads installed at the school's swimming pool, three gymnasiums and four of the academic buildings. School policy is to keep all doors locked except the main entrances, where all those entering can be observed by the front office staff. Students can enter the school at four other locations by entering a code into a keypad and faculty. Staff has access to all doors with their access cards.
Stone Ridge rents out its gym facilities on weekends to a wide variety of groups, resulting in different access schedules and privileges on nearly every weekend. In addition, the school runs a large summer camp with a whole new set of access requirements and personnel. Myler is able to manage all the different groups and access needs with ease, "I can immediately remove or add students, staff and guests to the system from any computer, anywhere, anytime," she said.
Recently, the DC area has been hit with a number of major snowstorms, forcing cancellation of several school days. Myler appreciates the level of control she has with Brivo. "I just changed the door opening schedule from my computer at home when the decision was made to close that day," she said.
For any educational institution, lockdown capabilities are critical. "In the past, I had to call the monitoring station, give them all the information, and they would do the lockdown. Now, I can lock down individual buildings or the entire school within seconds," Myler added.
Stone Ridge uses Brivo WebService to run regular reports to check for any unusual activity. When the system was first installed in August 2009, Myler detected that someone who was not authorized to enter the buildings tried on several occasions to gain access but was denied because the access card had been "turned off." This alerted school staff to be on the lookout for any potential issues.
Between heading off potential incidents, saving Myler and staff significant time and hassle, and the enhanced level of access management now enjoyed, the installation of Brivo WebService received high marks from the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.