|
by Colin Best and Glen Kitteringham
The access control system
is a vital part of a building’s
infrastructure and plays
a valuable role in the building’s
protection. It expands
and shrinks on a regular
basis as tenants move in
and out, new cards are
created, cards are lost,
access levels change, and
companies move from floor
to floor.
A system can cost a considerable
amount of money to design, install
and maintain. Tracking and documenting
physical changes to the systems
alone presents a challenge. But maintenance,
and the reliability or integrity of
alarms, is critical to the overall value of
the system.
The systems designed decades ago
were based upon the assumption that
technology was expensive, but electrical
work was cheap. In high-rise office
installations, this meant that a field
processor or control panel would be
installed and used to feed door controls
vertically to several floors. This complicates
future moves, particularly where
fire alarm systems need to interact with
security systems to release doors during
fire alarms. This is something that is a
complex issue. First, access systems have
been able to perform a complex array of
instructions based on certain input or combinations of input for decades. This,
however, would never satisfy building
codes that dictate that a door lock or
unlock upon activation of a fire alarm.
Multi-stage fire alarm systems dictate
that certain lock types in certain locations
must release. As a general rule, we
have adopted the belief that any EML
(electro-magnetic lock) must release
upon second stage alarm. In a highrise
environment, this will dictate that
the fire alarm system provides a set of
dry contacts for each floor to interact
with the card access power supplying
the EML’s. In a complex vertical riser
network, often (we have seen) doors are
relocated to other floors, while still tied
to a fire release on another floor. With
perhaps 100 door relocations in the space
of a year, after failing annual testing and
verification, the cost to investigate and
correct fire release deficiencies for that
many doors may amount to hundreds of
thousands dollars.
With doors several floors from their
control panels, detailed record keeping
is critical to reduce confusion. Recently,
the cost structure has shifted – now
electrical wiring and labor costs are
higher than the rapidly falling technology
costs. The expense of installing a
‘flat line’ design in a high rise is reasonable
compared to running vertical
pipe to maximize the use of hardware.
All interconnections of power and fire
alarms are local to each floor, making
troubleshooting and planning easy.
Another issue is the management of
alarms. In most large access control
systems, alarms have become so much
of a nuisance that they are almost meaningless.
When alarms are consistently
ignored because so many of them are
false, the value of the system is greatly
diminished. Often, the remote operator
will wait for a point to become normal
prior to acknowledgement. This
means that an alarm that has returned
to it’s regular state, for example: a door
alarm that has changed state to ‘closed’.
Alarms generally have four states of
supervision, Normal, In alarm, Trouble
(short), and Trouble (open). An alarm
is rarely responded to unless the door
remains open. They are treated this way
purely due to volume. In an enterprise
sized system where there are 10 to
20 thousand alarms generated in a 24
hour period, there is no feasible way
to respond to this amount of alarms
without the addition of an unreasonable
amount of manpower. Some installations
will have higher priority alarms
that demand a certain response and to
insure that the alarm is NOT missed
and ignored like the others, it is usually
programmed with a specific sound file
to let the operator know not to ignore it
like the thousands of other alarms that
are disregarded. Lost in the clutter of
thousands of alarms are the legitimate
‘forced door’ and ‘door held open’ alarms.
Therefore, security levels are reduced
because all alarms are deemed to be a
‘nuisance’. When staff stops responding
to alarms, complacency quickly sets in.
To correct this situation, it is important
to generate reports on the troublesome
alarms in order to investigate the cause.
Once it has been determined why the
point is generating too many alarms, a
maintenance program can be developed
to correct these deficiencies. In one
installation, the authors reduced overall
false alarms by 55% by repairing damaged
points, correctly installing them
or simply adjusting them. The most
significant drop in alarms was due to
the maintenance of PIR (passive infrared)
detectors. While there are still
many false alarms, the project to reduce
them to a more manageable level is still
in progress. This has been done over a
three year period; it is not a project that
is easy or quick. Thus the authors offer a
word of warning: implementing such a
program can require significant dollars
and time.
In many cases, the problem alarms are
fixed by simple programming changes
in the access control system to reduce
the impact of glass door ‘bounce’, or
changing shunt times (programmed
time differences often between regular
business hours and after hours). Some
may be simple changes to the door
such as the location of an exit sign in
front of the Passive Infrared request to
exit motion detector. Sometimes the
problem becomes more complex—there
have been situations where the wiring
for two or more door contacts has been
reversed because architectural changes
meant an electrical contractor (with little
knowledge of the function of access
control systems) incorrectly wired existing
doors to new locations.
The standardization of installed hardware
is also key to better managing
an access system. This is the reason
there needs to be a proper maintenance
program combined with a detailed
design criteria. Access control systems
in multi-tenant high-rise complexes are
certainly not static. An access system
is not installed and expected to be the
exact same in 20 years. In many complexes,
a tenant will hire an electrical
consultant that will use a general specification
for security dictating power,
manufacturer, etc. that will directly
conflict with an established standard. Rather than make corrections to comply
with the established standard, a
general contractor will use contingency
to “make” the mistake work with the
established standard. This kind of error
happens in many properties that have
no established control. A consistent
installation will look very inconsistent
in 5 years time. Trying to establish a
standard following these errors can create
more confusion, where you try to
apply building standards to changes to
an already existing mistake (ie: specifying
24 VDC strikes where the tenant
was already permitted to use 12VAC
strikes and only has power installed for
this type of strike). Standardizing the
type of locking devices means a smaller
stock of replacement parts, reducing
down/insecure times in the event of
hardware failure. There will sometimes
be situations where the design of a door
might require a unique device. In this
event, see if the manufacturer of your
chosen standard has a suitable locking
alternative. Often, manufacturer’s
electric strikes will use interchangeable
components despite the body style. Standardizing hardware to be used can
be a challenge. While this seems odd
that there is lack of standardization it
is due to the constant moving target of
managing and maintaining an enterprise
system with hundreds of moves,
deletions and additions per year. It goes
a long way if this equipment can be
specified and detailed in the building’s
design criteria manual. This manual is
very helpful to building staff and tenants
as they do alterations to the building.
While many tenants and some property
managers balk at the concept of being
told what hardware to install, having
a standard will be valuable for ongoing
operations of the building.
Database management of a large system
can be an easy task, provided the
operator has been given a clear roadmap
of standards for data entry. Too
many people entering data without a
documented standard will eventually
lead to a combination of entry styles
that will make it difficult to decipher
the location of doors, time-zones and
even cardholder identity. In a multitower
high-rise, a standard might be
an acronym referring to the tower, then
the floor, then the door – for instance
“ST-05-NLSD” would be South Tower,
Fifth Floor, North Lobby Single Door.
Keeping an all ‘caps’ standard for data
entry will make it easier to manage. A
standard format also comes in handy
when training new staff.
It is also important to keep up-todate
records and drawings that reflect
the constant changes associated with a
large system. Tracking of changes by an
administrator as they occur, then comparing
them to the as-built documentation
prepared by electrical engineers at the
end of each year will ensure consistency.
What was “as-built” this time last
year will often require 200-300 change
markups in a large system.
Also, a large card access installation
has to be protected from failure due
to accident, error, criminal intent, etc.
Applying good physical security to the
infrastructure and main file servers is
crucial to the protection of the systems.
Take note of the location of your valuable
data and IT related assets. Always
ask yourself ‘what if?’ when choosing a
location. Look at the areas vulnerable to
break and enter, flood, fire, etc. A best
case scenario is for security systems to
have dedicated riser rooms which are
rooms for security equipment and risers
(vertical piping for network cabling)
and fiber optics which have limited
access. Dedicated risers and limited
access means that there is far less chance
of accidental equipment damage when
people are installing other equipment,
reduces the chance that people will start
tampering with panels and cabling or
that those people up to no good deliberately
try to damage or destroy the access
control system network.
Assure there are limited privileges for
the operators working on the system.
If they don’t need access to something,
don’t give it to them. Implement a
suitable training program that will
give them the proper instruction on the
operation of the system prior to giving
them access.
Assure that the information is protected
by routine backups with a library
large enough to retrieve information
from at least two weeks prior. Keep an
off-site monthly backup in the event
that a failure has also affected the
backup library. Large modern systems
should also have servers with various
levels of redundancy. RAID (Redundant
Array) hard disk controllers and multiple
redundant hard drives are relatively
inexpensive and can save hours or even
days of recovery time. Manufacturer
training for those responsible for the
system has its advantages for in-house
support. Integrator staff (system dealer)
will almost always have manufacturer-
trained technicians, however your
system is only one of many that they
work on and have to continue to be
familiar with.
Discussed here are several strategies
to assist in maintaining the life of your
building’s access control system. The
investment you make will extend the
life of the system, increase the level
of protection and make people’s lives
easier when the system is in proper running
order.
About the Authors
Colin Best is the Manager of Security Systems
and Glen Kitteringham is the Director, Security
& Life Safety. Both are with Brookfield
Properties, responsible for the Western Canadian
portfolio encompassing several million
square feet of commercial high-rise properties.
www.brookfieldproperties.com
|
