Introduction
The University of Applied Science for Technology, Economy and Media in Offenburg is one of the most renowned educational institutions in the southern Upper Rhine region, and is divided into two campuses: Offenburg and Gengenbach. Founded as a state college of engineering in 1964, the university now has faculties including technical business administration and, more recently, media and information sciences.
The brief
The university needed an electronic access control system to provide a means of ensuring security and safety of employees and staff through identity authentication and movement tracking, as well as securing valuable assets and sensitive information. They wanted to introduce a system that was cost-effective to install and capable of growing with their changing needs and that could provide a solution to the challenge of managing secured access over a number of sites or buildings, whilst providing multiple applications to assist in overall site automation and management.
A robust solution was essential that would be able to stand up to daily use in a student environment yet still look stylish and contemporary to complement this new building.
The key requirements for the system were that it had to work with Mifare credential technology and had to be capable of utilising only one data sector on the Mifare card, leaving other data sectors available for multi-applications, such as vending, PC access, registration and library cards. This restriction was a stipulation of the German government and Ingersoll Rand was the only supplier that the University could find that could meet this criteria.
The solution
The PegaSys intelligent access control system from Ingersoll Rand was able to meet all the University’s needs and is now in use across both campuses.
PegaSys provided an instant and economical way to upgrade their existing mechanical doors to an electronically controlled access solution, with minimal installation inconvenience. The result is an easy to manage system that has improved both their security and the control they have over their premises. It provides many of the benefits of a networked hard-wired access control system in terms of functionality, flexibility, control and security but at a fraction of the cost.
The system is designed to reduce the time and level of expertise required to manage it, without compromising functionality, flexibility, control or security. To achieve this, users are able to choose a level of complexity to suit their environment and access control needs - however it also allows users to expand their system to suit their changing requirements. The PegaSys system is also able to support existing technologies and credentials so that sites that already have systems using Mifare Classic or Legic can easily incorporate it.
Sites that are already using |
The University has been so pleased with the system that during recent construction of the new media complex they extended the access control scheme and installed PegaSys terminals on all the laboratories to control access and to protect the expensive and sensitive equipment.
The University is supported, serviced and supplied by ASAL GmbH Offenburg, an Approved Installer for PegaSys systems. Mr. Martin Gaß, Technical Operations Manager at the University and member of the board for occupational safety, attests to the high degree of reliability and user-friendliness of the PegaSys system and comments, "The close proximity and the fast, reliable service make this partnership very valuable."
