A mid-sized Texas city and Konica Minolta client for more than 20 years was faced with challenges regarding the gated entry to its municipal parking lot that accommodated city employee cars and trucks such as maintenance and trash removal vehicles.
Challenge
The gate was controlled by a key fob at car level, making it difficult for truck drivers to easily swipe to get in. Many truck drivers needed to stop, open their door to reach down and swipe, and often could not get back into the cab in time to negotiate the entrance after the gate lifted.
As a result, at least once a month, a couple of trucks crashed into the gate while trying to enter the lot. Often the steering wheel followed the driver’s reach and pulled the truck askew, so even if he recovered in time for the rise of the gate, his truck faced the side of the gate system and damaged it.
Safety issue
Each gate crash caused the city time and effort to work through their administrative process to get the gate fixed
Each gate crash caused the city time and effort to work through their administrative process to get the gate fixed, man-hours devoted to the repair, and time/expense of repairing damaged vehicles.
The city also saw the difficulty of the trucks trying to maneuver through the gate as a safety issue and knew there had to be a better way to accomplish its security and safety objectives.
The solution
With the opportunity to offer something new, Angel Word, Konica Minolta Major Account Representative, and JT Williams, Konica Minolta Service and Solutions Engineer met with the city’s Assistant Director of Facilities, who manages video security for the city.
The team took the opportunity to introduce the MOBOTIX product suite. When the Assistant Director learned of the VSS access control feature of the MOBOTIX cameras and the licence plate reader application, he immediately saw a solution to his perpetual gate-crashing scenario.
MOBOTIX M73 camera with licence-plate reader
Additionally, the Konica Minolta team reminded the Assistant Director that he could make his purchase through the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) cooperative contract, managed by Jeff Tinkle, Konica Minolta Government Accounts Manager, to order and get his installations more quickly than if he had to go through the RFP process.
From the VSS team, Hunter Fort, Manager of Business Development Security Solutions, and Ryker Carlson, Technical Project Engineer, provided a proof of concept (POC) to the city with a MOBOTIX M73 camera using the licence-plate reader application and described the easy ‘plug ‘n play’ installation process. In the end, they solved the city’s problem for under $3000.
VMS integration
With the interoperability of MOBOTIX cameras, they were able to integrate with the city’s existing VMS system
With the interoperability of MOBOTIX cameras to work on other platforms, they were able to integrate with the city’s existing VMS system, Avigilon, enabling the Assistant Director to see the images through their existing set-up.
The Assistant Director indicated that he intended to load 154 trucks’ licence plates into the system, but within five days, he had loaded close to 1,000 licence plates of the city’s vehicles plus some staff.
Access control solution
The Assistant Director of Facilities said, “With the licence plate reader, we now have corrected a safety and security issue. It was an inconvenience for our drivers and a perpetual cost of time/money for our department, and now it is easy to let authorised vehicles in.”
He also noted that the city utilises gates in other parts of the municipality, such as parks and recreation, police, and fire, so there may be additional opportunities to help the city with access control. This solution applies nationwide, to all municipalities or places with gates for authorised vehicles.
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