SALTO Systems XS4 electronic locks installed at Santa Maria College in Attadale, Western Australia

SALTO’s electronic locks were installed throughout college including classroom, faculty building, and perimeter doors

Each campus is different however, and each must develop a strategy tailored to its own unique circumstances. The measures used to achieve this should reflect the character of the college and its educational needs as well as the demands of good security. What is appropriate for one campus may not suit another. Each will have its own unique problems and requirements.

In the case of Santa Maria College in Attadale, a southern suburb of Perth, Western Australia, this meant addressing the need to replace a licensed physical key system which was reaching end of life and had become expensive to manage amongst the large numbers of staff particularly if keys got lost or mislaid.

If a key was lost a staff member was given another key and/or sometimes doors were retro-fitted with a new lock. As a result door keys proliferated and although there had never been a real problem, no one knew when an errant key might fall into malicious hands. The college, staff, students and parents expected a better system than that, and the college wanted to be on the leading edge, setting a good impression as well as controlling who could enter its buildings.

Chris Dawson, Property Manager for Santa Maria College, says “Due to the limitations experienced historically with our physical key system the college was keen to explore alternative options and these eventually led us to SALTO and their SVN (SALTO Virtual Network) technology.

When we were considering the various solutions on the market it became clear that we needed a system which could be easily deployed on to multiple doors which were not always accessible to physical cabling infrastructure. We also needed a system that could be extended to include our lift elevator so that we could provide access to disabled staff and/ or children at the college.

SALTO was able to provide this capability using their multi-relay output control board. In addition their smart card credential technology meant that we could also use supplied cards for multiple applications such as providing staff access to on site printers. This all helped to present us with even more functionality and provide us with an excellent return on our investment."

Neil Armstrong, SALTO Business Development Manager (WA) comments, “Having decided our XS4 standalone battery operated electronic locks were for them, the order from Santa Maria College was put through our local dealer Security and Key. They subsequently installed the product to 59 doors throughout the college including to classroom doors, faculty building doors and perimeter doors.”

The XS4 electronic handle needs no hard wiring and provides a wire-free networked electronic locking solution with an impressive range of features.

Its SVN (SALTO Virtual Network) provides the means to operate in an almost totally keyless environment because of its unique ability to distribute card holder and system information to access controlled doors by using the card to upload and download information between offline doors and online control units. The cards build up 'on-card' audit trails through normal use giving the college complete control over access and enabling the movement of students, staff and visitors to be monitored 24/7 as well as controlling who can access what, where and when at all times.

The key cards can also be programmed to allow access to specific rooms or areas within selected periods only, with the doors auto locking at pre-specified times if required. And unlike the former licensed physical key system, if key security is breached due to the loss or theft of a card it can be instantly deleted without the need or cost of rekeying or changing locks – saving the college time and money.

Chris Dawson concludes “We very much like the features that the SALTO SVN system gives us and we find the audit trail facility, with every SALTO lock storing up to 1000 events on a non-volatile memory, especially useful as our previous keyed system was not able to provide this. With the system key cards are also very easy and comparatively cheap to manage compared to their physical counterparts.”