PAC addresses post-lockdown access control challenges

“Access control technology has a significant role to play in helping to protect building occupants from infection, alongside its ability to configure smart and reliable strategies to help alleviate anxiety, enhance confidence and maintain regulatory compliance,” commented Pete England, PAC’s global product manager. “Over the last year we’ve been working hard to leverage the power of our technology. As a result, Access Central v5.3 has been designed to help limit person-to-person contact, control occupancy levels, reduce surface touches and swiftly initiate contact tracing procedures.”

Designed primarily for the commercial, educational and healthcare sectors, Access Central acts as a central resource for keyholder records and access privileges, with the ability to set preconfigured alarms, track activities and maintain a full audit trail.

To build on its existing capabilities, Access Central v5.3 now has additional occupancy management features including managed entrance, occupancy tracking and global anti-passback for accurate tracing of keyholders. This will help to make sure occupants adhere to designated one-way flow systems through buildings and don’t overpopulate specific areas. 

Further, a keyholder’s access privileges can be temporarily disabled if they don’t read out when exiting an area.

Access Central v5.3 also boasts enhanced building management and security features such as a guard tour that configures set routes around a building for security officers. Using preconfigured parameters, automated event notifications send PC pop-up notifications when occupancy limits are reached and/or exceeded, restrict entry and provide a live display of the number of people in an area. This may form part of a broader Health and Safety policy and can be used to configure a traffic light-style system, while time periods are configurable to enable one or multiple managed entrances per day.

Consolidating CCTV and access control functionality is more vital than ever and Access Central v5.3 offers options for 3xLOGIC VIGIL integration. Cameras can be directly configured and monitored through each software solution, with access to VIGIL’s business intelligence capabilities achieved via integration with a VIGIL server. As such, video verification through CCTV actions can be captured through pre-sets that, for instance, move a PTZ camera as an event is taking place.

Pete England concluded: “As people begin to return to their workplaces, building safety and security needs to be rethought, reconfigured and adapted to meet a complex set of challenges. Access control technology must be used in smarter ways than ever before to help protect building occupants.”  

*PAC will be hosting a webinar for the commercial markets on Thursday 1 April at 4.00 pm. For more information visit the event registration page