The Guildhall School of Music & Drama, situated in the heart of the City of London, impresses not only with its unique location, neighbouring the Barbican Centre, Europe's largest multi-arts and conference venue, but is at the same time home to outstandingly talented teachers and students from around the world.
Only a complete security system can ensure the smooth operation of the 100,000 square meters complex, spread out over 5 neighbouring buildings with currently around 2,000 people accessing the different facilities.
The challenge
The school needed to replace its outdated access control system with one that clearly identifies and records who exactly has access to where, at which times on all of the 5 separate sites.
Large sections of the main school building with its music hall and theatre are open to the public frequently hosting student performances that attract large audiences. For these events shared access doors to the Barbican Centre are opened allowing the smooth passage of high volumes.
Some 2,000 students and staff require different levels of access including 800 full time and 400 junior students, 150 part time students, more than 450 teachers and 200 employees. All of them requiring access to some of the school's in-house facilities including 41 teaching/practice rooms, recording and sound studios, the students' Common Room, I.T. facilities, a specialist library and residential accommodation for those who live in.
The solution
The required system needed to meet all 3 challenges in a one-card solution. After a thorough evaluation process, a contract was awarded to Frontline Security Solutions, a proven specialist in tailored security solutions, to install the recommended product, TDSi's eXcel 4, a networkable access control unit in combination with TDSi's eXguard Pro software offering total flexibility and peace of mind.
At present the sites are linked to each other via modem allowing administration from just one place. The eXguard Pro software allows an unlimited number of doors to be controlled which makes it easy to open up additional doors for certain events. The creation of individual photo ID and badge designing are software features that give total freedom to the end user to suit the particular needs of the organisation.
The benefits
Since the implementation, management of security matters has become greatly simplified and a lot more efficient all together, taking away some concern from the vast responsibilities of Mr. Martin Auger, Head of Estates Management at the Guildhall School. The chosen magnetic cards are issued to everybody and serve as the school's ID card giving access to designated areas, a discount card for the in-house cafeteria, and as a library card and can be used for cashless photocopying.
Martin Auger, says "The new access control system has cut down on a lot of administration costs throughout the departments. At the same time we have one card only that's useful to everybody and by using our own design and colour coding for the different user groups it's very easy to quickly identify people."
The selected access control system also gives sufficient flexibility to grow together with any future expansion projects making use of the in-built network capabilities of the eXcel 4 allowing change from modem to LAN based communications.
