King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of London’s largest and busiest hospitals. It provides a full range of local services for over 700,000 people in southeast London.
The ACT equipment enabled networking the company’s units to a PC allowing up to 2,000 doors to be monitored on a single system with 30,000 users.
Flexible protocols
Crucially, the flexible protocols that characterise the controllers meant they could function with the existing third-party readers already on site. This kind of openness and transparency appealed to the client at many levels and an initial 140 doors were installed with ACTpro 3000 controllers. There are now over 500 doors on the system.
There were immense cost savings but the approach was also “green” in terms of its use of component materials. The Trust could not only continue using existing locking systems but was even able to retain ancillary units such as power supplies and exit devices.
Minimising installation work
It should be remembered that large areas of the hospital are devoted to clinical procedures in sterile conditions that can be compromised by any form of engineering activity, so minimizing installation work was advantageous. A final plus factor was that the ACT controllers could function from existing IT cabling on the Trust’s LAN, so avoiding the need to lay additional hard wiring in all but a few locations.
Rochester-based NT Security, is active in both civic and commercial markets including the infrastructure and leisure sectors. The company has expertise in both access control and video, and has its own range of locking products aimed at hotel properties. Visit: www.ntsecurity.co.uk.
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