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Modern and affordable technology for older residential properties
A housing association in charge of an older residential estate inhabited by both long-term tenants and landlords, sought to harmonise access in the stairwells, lifts and above-ground car park in order to reduce problems with previously utilized, outdated tools.
Situation
- Residents became increasingly acutely aware of the inconvenience caused by the parallel coexistence of several types of tools for navigating communal spaces.
- The remote controls opening the gates increasingly stopped working over time and the plastic cards proved prone to being lost.
- To enter the car park, visitors were reliant on a security guard opening the gate, and to enter the cage, they had to connect through an outdated, camera-less intercom.
- The community had previously tried to implement a digital tool to open the gates remotely, but the ability to open by phone from any location led to inadvertent confusion and abuse.
Challenge
- The estate was built as a development in several phases over the years. This meant the presence of various systems, including the original ones as well as those replaced or upgraded over time.
- The owners of rented flats wanted a modern tool that would allow them to allocate access to their staircases to lessors.
- On the other hand, the estate administration needed to be able to individually adapt the scope of access in the app to the different categories of occupants - permanent residents, visitors, motorists or those without a car - as well as to remove access without waiting for cards to be returned.
- Building security, previously responsible for guarding the entrance to the estate and accustomed to traditional visitor identity verification, had to be introduced to the principles of the new technology.
Solution
- The entrances to the staircases, entrance and garage gates, wickets and lift callouts at all stages of the development were fitted with the same model of Blue Bolt devices, ensuring a uniform quality of access, regardless of the existing systems and their condition.
- By agreement with the community and the management company, access within the application was divided into separate stairwells, surface and underground garage entrances to ensure the highest possible precision in access control.
- Where the management has agreed, residents can allocate access to their visitors themselves and set time limits for their access, without compromising the security of the entire estate. In other areas, the administrator has full control over who is granted access.
- Technology that is decidedly less problematic than cards and remote controls has relaxed communication between residents and the manager. The tenants appreciated the intuitiveness and reliability of the solution, which provides a great deal of autonomy, and the managers saw the benefits of the app as applicable to other sites in their portfolio - eventually leading to a wider collaboration.
- Prior to launching the system to residents, the security guards received extensive training in its use. As a result, a security guard can quickly verify a visitor's identity and, if the situation requires, grant or revoke access themselves.
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