Building owners and occupiers leverage access gates for smart and secure traffic flow in modern workspaces
As part of a layered approach to physical security, access gates that control foot traffic flow are becoming increasingly used in multi-tenant commercial buildings.
“Where companies own or are leasing multiple floors of a building, for example, an access gate can be placed before the top or bottom of a staircase, so that only people with authorisation can move freely between floors,” says entrance security specialist Michael Fisher, who is the local MD of global security entrance and architectural revolving door group Boon Edam.
As Managing Director of Boon Edam Australia, with his ear to the experiences of 27 Boon Edam Territory MDs spread across the globe, Fisher says the world (and Australia and New Zealand) are generally far more aware of the OH&S needs to protect employees, visitors and increasingly transient workforces sharing the same workspaces.
“The big companies we talk to – and these are some of the world’s and Australia’s biggest – tell us, yes, security of people, property and data are vital to them, but they want to be able to deal with their own people, employees, and visitors through technologies with an elegant, unobtrusive style – not something that looks like a prison.
Winglock wide access, customised height access gates, recently applied over multiple floors of a major corporate metropolitan HQ
“For fit-out companies or security consultants charged with keeping offices secure and controlling foot traffic flow, an access gate can be a seamless and effective solution.
A layered approach
“Typical day-to-day risks can often be handled subtly and efficiently with some good, layered planning of who is entitled to go where in buildings,” says Fisher.
“If a minority haven’t got the message about security risks being the highest for 50 years, from no less an authority than the DG of ASIO, Mike Burgess, then maybe they are not listening and not fully engaged with Duty of Care. If so, that’s a clear management risk.
“The planners’ and managers’ task then becomes more one of managing, monitoring and recording the flow of people to prevent incidents in the first place. They don’t want, or need, a phalanx of security personnel always out front – this valuable and costly resource can be reserved for where and when it is most needed.
“Businesses that need to attract and create a comfortable environment for people understand – as architects, interior fit-out and building companies do – that a scowling, institutional feel to design is a turnoff to visitors and staff alike.
“This applies whether it be a corporate HQ, public facility, bank, telecommunications centre, data centre, accounting, or health facility with immensely valuable technology and responsibility.”
Winglock Swing
One particular technology with which Boon Edam and had success in Australia and worldwide in creating a light, bright, and smiling welcome is its frameless, tough wide-access gate, the Winglock Swing. This elegant tailored wide access and customised height alternative (up to 1800 mm) is used both to regulate access and control traffic flows (often in conjunction with similarly welcoming, bright and energy-efficient revolving doors, such as frameless Crystal Tourniket types, used here in a bank HQ.)
A virtually transparent but highly effective Crystal Tourniket revolving door in the background complements access speed gates from the same security and entrance family.
“Access solutions such as Winglock Swings are favoured mainly by interior fit-out companies and firms who manufacture and install stairwells between floors of a building. One example is a major metropolitan professional services firm, handling all types of valuable material, that occupies multiple floors with a stairwell between each floor, for which for which sets of Winglock Swings were specified and successfully installed.”
“The Winglock Swing access gate range is part of much broader range of speed gates and integrated revolving door entrances technologies available under the one roof.
“In response to specifier and user feedback it’s engineered for the times in which we live, as an ideal secure entrance management solution for facilities needing a wide opening through which large objects or higher volumes of people can pass.
Compatible with the BoonTouch access control dashboard designed to improve the visibility over installed security entrance products, Winglock Swing makes life easier for installers and users by being available for both single and double-wing configurations, says Fisher.
“The important thing from a security perspective is that individual products (such as our Winglock swing) be part of a broader integrated system, a family of products that can extend from welcoming and hygienic touchless front revolving doors through to high security portals designed to eliminate tailgating and unauthorised entry.
“Otherwise you can end up with the tail wagging the dog, by choosing an isolated product that is good for one task, then everything being expensively customised to fit around it. This is the opposite of good planning. In the worst cases, users realise their error too late and need to tear down and start again. It happens. And it is a real danger both in refurbs and even in new buildings being adapted for new purposes.”
Enhancements to Winglock Swing respond to customer requests for an extended range of dimensions in wide lane entrances. The range is now available with tall glass panels (up to 1800 mm in height) or as a double glass configuration (up to 1400 mm in passage width).
The bottom line
Well-designed external and internal security entrances should be visually appealing and easy to navigate, as well as functional and secure.
Ideally, they should be part of broader family of touchless security and entrance products, rather than a single specialist product that obliges entrance system developers to access new specs for new individual products introduced to the system composition, potentially wasting time and money.
They should also be firmly future focussed, ensuring the supplier offering today’s great deal is going to be there tomorrow when the time comes to update, upgrade and introduce the evolving cavalcade of features in a fast-moving field of product evolution.
“And if the product family also happens to have major passive benefits such as energy saving design and airlock functionality to save HVAC energy, then that is a major benefit too.”