Stockport College is the largest educational establishment in the area with over 4,000 students and 350 staff. They deliver education for school leavers, adults and apprentices to help achieve their career goals. Courses take place in a vibrant, multicultural learning environment that boasts some of the best teaching and extra-curricular facilities in the country.
Requirement
As an existing Inner Range customer and user of our legacy systems (Concept and Insight), Stockport College was keen to upgrade to Integriti and benefit from improved access control, security and building automation capabilities. The college is a busy site with huge numbers of people entering and exiting the campus all day. It also houses high value assets like IT equipment, as well as confidential information such as student data and examination papers.
To maintain stringent security levels, Stockport College System Electrician Tim Banham recognised that it was essential for him and the rest of the facilities & security team to introduce a more comprehensive security system to conveniently manage student, staff and visitor entry and exit, whilst also reducing the risk of intruders, theft and even terror attacks.
Solution
Integriti from Inner Range is an intelligent third-generation security platform, setting new industry standards for integrated access control, security, and building automation. With endless scalability, it’s ideally designed to meet the demands of multi-visitor sites like Stockport College and it can manage as many as 16 million users and 65,000 controllers.
With Integriti, the college can leverage the system’s compatibility with cluster serving architecture, auto-discovery of door controllers and devices, as well as integrated Ethernet, to provide remote management and uploads via a smartphone. Another key feature is that it has been designed around system-centric programming. The process of user setup has been simplified to a ‘Who? What? Why?’ approach, a language used to describe permissions, rather than system-speak. This simple change revolutionises permissions setups.
Tim Banham adds: “Integriti’s intuitive design means installation and commissioning was quick, streamlined and effortless – while the system’s simple and easy to use ‘plug-and-play’ system expansion could not be more straightforward. Inner Range has researched and listened to common issues with other access control and security systems and used that feedback to design Integriti.”
Integriti features used by Stockport College:
- Gigabytes of on-board memory at controller hardware level, ensuring that their access control system maintains complete system functionality if offline
- Forensic audit trail tracking all software changes
- Seamless IP-based multi-controller system architecture options
- ARM processors on all hardware
- Easy plug-and-play in UniBus, an innovative in-cabinet bus which allows the connection of expansion modules, communications modules, and door and reader modules on a common plug-and-play bus
- Powerful scripted logic capability
- Wizard for first-time card setup & recover card number option
- Associations between CCTV cameras and entities such as doors and alarms
Result
Integriti has provided Stockport College with a secure access control solution that grants or denies their students, staff and visiting contractors convenient yet secure access across multiple zones, simply by using a smartcard. Access is determined by protocol e.g. they have science today so can get into the science lab. Tim Banham, System Electrician & Advanced Technician, Stockport College praises some of the benefits of the system:
“Upgrading to Integriti was a no-brainer. We had heard positive reviews and already had the infrastructure in place, as many of the panels are compatible with our old system. The main reason for installing Integriti was increased student security but since then we’ve expanded its usage to meet some other specific needs we have as an education establishment. The 3-badging alarm system has allowed us to protect vulnerable areas of the college, such as exam paper stores. Authorised personnel can re-alarm the room upon exit without having to wait for security staff to intervene, so there is never a time that the papers are accessible to anyone apart from them.
“Integriti has also given us the convenience of managing our car park barriers in the interests of priority parkers (such as disabled people) whilst still controlling access to the main car park, once full. Access for priority parkers had become an issue with our old barriers, as they couldn’t get through to the priority area when the main carpark was at capacity and the barrier became locked.
“Stockport College has also benefitted from cost savings because with Integriti we can control our out of hours lighting by setting the lights to be alarm-activated only. Another project in which Integriti has made a pivotal difference is the introduction of a panic buttons and a lockdown system. Unfortunately, the current security climate requires extra-vigilance, and this is a challenge that the Integriti Technical Support team could help us step up to with their comprehensive knowledge and expertise.
“I absolutely cannot fault the Technical Support Team. Whether it’s a quick day-to-day query or a new way to manage changes to access requirements, they’re always there at the end of the phone with a speedy response. There aren’t many scenarios they haven’t encountered but if they don’t know the answer to my questions then they’ll mock-up the issue themselves to find the right solution. No other company offers technical support the way Inner Range does.
“As the college continues to grow and our needs change shape, we have every confidence that Integriti will be the access control, security and building automation system that has the scope to evolve with us.”
