One of Australia’s pioneering fully integrated property groups, Charter Hall has more than 31 years of experience in funds management and property investment in the core sectors of office, retail, industrial and logistics, and social infrastructure.
Having carefully curated a diverse AUD 61.3 billion portfolio of more than 1,500 high-quality long-leased properties, partnership and financial discipline are necessarily at the heart of Charter Hall’s approach to commercial real estate. Acting in the best interest of its customers and communities, the company combines insight and inventiveness to unlock hidden value and nurture a development pipeline of more than AUD 9 billion that, long term, will deliver sustainable, technologically enabled projects for Charter Hall customers.
Charter Hall is committed to continuously exploring ways to leverage the latest technologies to advance sustainability and ensure security for its buildings and their surroundings. To that end, the company developed the Charli workplace app to provide its building communities with a range of services, features and benefits to create valued experiences that are convenient for its tenants.
From concierge services to building updates and alerts, Charli was designed to keep tenants connected with the broader workplace community and provide tenant managers with quick, convenient access to Charter Hall’s property management services for service requests and to report or log issues.
Charter Hall recognised that integrating mobile access control into the app would optimise the role Charli could play in achieving a frictionless yet secure and sustainable tenant experience.
“At the same time, we wanted to streamline our access technology by deploying universal readers across Charter Hall properties in tandem with mobile IDs, so access could be easily adapted for each building but still controlled at a central point,” said Loren Mellowship, General Manager – Wesley Place, who oversees the company’s three adjacent Wesley Precinct buildings in Melbourne.
Building upon its existing relationship with HID, Charter Hall’s National Operations Team opted to deploy HID Mobile Access and HID Signo Readers for access control.
Ensuring that everything was integrated for both Charter Hall and its tenants was a crucial part of the solution. The access control system became a foundational layer to build upon by pulling together all the disparate systems in the buildings. This was done not only through the readers, but also by utilising an API-based approach wherever possible.
HID Mobile Access lets any compatible mobile device be used as a credential to securely access doors, gates, networks and more. It significantly increases convenience and boosts operational efficiency without compromising security. By eliminating the need for physical access cards to move throughout buildings and to access secure areas including parking, printers and lockers, the mobile access solution also reduces costs.
Critical to the success of any technology investment and deployment is the involvement of key stakeholders throughout the process, as well as futureproofing and ensuring the longevity of the solution. This is true whether that investment affects a single asset or is portfolio-wide.
To that end, the highly versatile HID Signo Reader supports the widest range of credential technologies via native Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC) and Apple Wallet. It delivers unparalleled performance with ultra-secure storage of cryptographic keys and a connection to the future through secure bidirectional communication support. Each reader is also designed to be connected and managed remotely for easy upgrades.
“We took a precinct approach, which is why HID was ultimately selected. Everything is now on the same backbone, which makes it a lot easier to manage what is going on, and everything is talking to the same central point,” said Mellowship. In conjunction with Charli, Charter Hall tenants and employees can now use their handsets to access the entire Wesley Precinct and its amenities, including end-of-trip facilities and FollowMe Printing.
Self-onboarding for the building also allows the tenant to request and receive access any time of the day—without the delays of waiting for a physical card, phone call or someone to come to the building.
“No one forgets their mobile device so they can use their mobile ID as a backup if they forget their physical card. Security guards also save time when new credentials need to be issued. It may only take 30 seconds to open a second app to do that, but if you’re doing 1,000 cards over a year that multiplies quickly. So, integration makes things more efficient. It saves time,” said Mellowship.
