HID Global’s new physical access control platform for building security and management, workforce optimisation

HID Global, a provider of trusted identity solutions, announced its new HID Location Services that provide organisations with visibility into the location of their workforce in a facility, making it possible to analyse room usage for better building management and increased operational efficiency. The offering is tailor-made for enterprises, universities, manufacturing facilities, or any organisation seeking to optimise their workforce and streamline facility management using proximity and real-time location services.

HID Location Services platform

“HID Location Services extends HID’s leadership in physical access control with a cutting-edge Internet of Things offering for workforce optimisation solutions that can be easily integrated into existing systems,” said Harm Radstaak, Vice President and Managing Director of Physical Access Control Solutions with HID Global. “These new capabilities leverage the power of trusted identities to provide a new level of visibility for customers to better understand how buildings are used, help find people quickly in emergency situations, and deliver an extraordinary user experience.”

HID Location Services is enabled by Bluvision, a company recently acquired by HID, and provides numerous capabilities based on an organisation’s needs. Its real-time location services are ideal for monitoring and providing deeper analytics around the movement of personnel in a building for better insight to optimise usage of facilities, common areas, and individual rooms. The proximity-based services verify when personnel are nearby a given area for use cases such as monitoring employee check in and check out; it also helps organisations meet health and safety regulations by monitoring room occupancy.

Leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy

The solution leverages Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and delivers unprecedented accuracy, even in large, open spaces and areas in which it has historically been challenging to implement RFID technologies. HID Location Services includes a cloud service, portals, and Bluetooth beacons in the form of HID smart cards, providing a one-card solution for both indoor positioning services and physical access control. Its cloud-based model and minimal hardware requirements also eliminate the expensive infrastructure setup of antennas, servers, and wired infrastructure to further reduce total cost of ownership. The installation simply entails plugging in AC-powered BLE/Wi-Fi gateways and providing personnel with the smart card beacon.

Future use cases of HID Location Services can extend beyond workforce and building optimisation to include building automation capabilities, rich security features, and capabilities that facilitate life safety management and compliance.