University of York
Founded on principles of excellence, equality and opportunity for all, the University of York opened in 1963 with just 230 students. Since then they have become one of the world‘s leading universities, carving out a reputation as an academic powerhouse where a clear focus on excellence has secured national and international recognition alongside longer established institutions.
“We needed to find a security solution that is flexible and capable of providing a variety of options, dormakaba met those needs and provided a good customer service and I believe they can offer further solutions. dormakaba have provided the University of York with the exceptionally good solution and I’m certainly happy to recommend dormakaba to any other universities.”
Geoff Brown
Security Manager
University of York
Nowadays, around 11,000 students a year pass through 30 different departments and research centres at the University of York. Therefore, it was essential to upgrade buildings on the existing campuses and develop brand new sites to increase and improve the student facilities.
The university previously managed the access rights for their staff, students and contractors manually whilst also recording their details within various databases. The growth of university sites and campuses meant that they needed an Integrated IT solution that would unify details of all users automatically and provide more efficient and reliable way of securing their premises.
Mark Barber, System Development Manager at University of York said: “The University of York has been going through major expansion over the last few years, in effect doubling its footprint. The system that we used to have in place for access control just wouldn’t be scalable, but also at the same time we were looking at a smart card project. We wanted to consolidate all of our various tokens and ID cards into one future-proof product.“
dormakaba was awarded the contract to provide an integrated IT solution for the first college that was built on the new Heslington East site- Goodricke College, named after the British astronomer John Goodricke, offering accommodation and other facilities for students. dormakaba installed a fully integrated solution at the college, comprising dormakaba Exos system, CardLink standalone components, C-Levers and pExtra high securitymechanical cylinders.
Geoff Brown, Security Manager at University of York commented: “dormakaba's Exos system is the software that allows us to centrally manage the system. The University of York has 9 colleges and in each college we have residential students. Residential students have a dormakaba card that allows them access to the main building and also we allow access to communal areas, including the cycle shed.”
Installing fully integrated system enabled the university to have a cost effective and flexible access control on any door, barrier, lift or access point coupled with a reliable and accurate time recording solution for staff, students and contractors. Mark Barber added: “One of the big plus points of it, is that we are able to feed Exos on a nightly basis with records from our people data base which contains all our current staff and students- so we always have up-to-date list of university members in the Exos data base. One of the by-products of that, is that we can also feed through into Exos expiry dates of when staff or students are about to leave so without any other interventions, by setting certain parameter within the interface, people’s access right can be revoke automatically and universally in the dormakaba system”.
Further developments under one unified dormakaba Exos system, included control of doors at the Physics and Electronics building that has been added onto the existing campus.
A further online Exos doors, C- Levers and pExtra cylinders were installed at various new department buildings throughout Heslington East, including Theatre, Film and TV (TFTV), Law and Management (L&M), Computer Science Building (CSB) and the Communal Area(HUB).
The University of York bears testament to the success of a complete dormakaba solution. dormakaba technology has ensured all online and stand alone systems can be integrated which not only provides diversity in levels of security but also future proofs the University of York’s investment.