Doncaster Culture and Leisure Trust (DCLT) is a registered charity delivering premier leisure provision venues across Doncaster. DCLT offers a diverse range of health, fitness, leisure, and entertainment activities to customers to help to achieve a healthier community across Doncaster. DCLT’s premier venue, The Dome, required a new solution that would protect several areas, including one of the largest gym’s in Doncaster, The Fitness Village.
DCLT had a specific brief for this project that specified enhancing the staff and customer experience, while simultaneously providing access control solutions to restricted areas from the general public, members, and staff alike. Alongside interfacing the onsite gym membership system to enable a single source of data to populate the access control and automate the process, the Trust was also in a transition period of moving members from barcode to RFID badges.
Advanced fast-acting swing speed gates
Moreover, the entrance to The Fitness Village gym was also under renovation. The access control system would also need to feature advanced fast-acting swing speed gates and slim lanes. Advanced user obstacle protection also had to be kept in consideration to keep members safe during peak times when there would be a high level of footfall from visitors.
Solutions Provided:
- Oliver Law Security (OLS) did not hesitate to recommend the Vanderbilt ACT365 system. ACT365 is not only a fully cloud-based product; it offers a flexible solution for installation and management that OLS identified as a key ingredient to meet DCLT’s project brief.
- In addition to DCLT’s security requirement, OLS also realised ACT365 as an ideal solution for this task, given the product’s very focused API integration.
- Thanks to the ACT365 interface, OLS was able to integrate DCLT’s gym management system to enable single-source data to be used to populate the access control system, keep records up-to-date, and enhance customer experience.
- For instance, previously, the older system had taken up to 3-5 seconds to validate members and open the entry turnstiles.
- Once the API interface had been achieved, this validation is now done instantly through ACT365 and allows members with active memberships through the entry points without any minimal delay.
- The scope of this project, although not significant in the number of doors, was a very technical project with integration into SQL server and a third-party membership system with the potential for thousands of would-be users.
Key Highlights:
- According to OLS, using ACT365 and its API interface is a game-changer for this type of project. With multiple updates per day, the access control system is always fully populated with the correct, validated members ensuring DCLT’s premier venue, The Dome, is protected against memberships that have lapsed.
- The system is very user-friendly and can grow with DCLT’s plan for the future, and adding further developed integration for other areas within the near future.
- The system is entirely cloud-based offers an off-premise solution with no additional new servers required or PC’s running software.
- Through the ACT365 app, DCLT’s site administrators can manage the system for staff.
- The solution that OLS has implemented has removed the need for old, antiquated technologies and moved DCLT’s security system forward to the cloud and future-proof solutions.
- The beauty of the interface is once the schedule runs, all information is autonomously sent to the ACT365 database, meaning adding new memberships, updating memberships, or revoking access is seamless, not tying up staff verifying and administering the membership/access control systems respectively.
