Many educational institutions are investigating ways in which they can upgrade their security management. Control over ‘who goes where and when’ grants peace of mind to staff, parents and students alike. Hutt Valley High School (HVHS) made the decision to migrate their outdated mechanical keying system to benefit from a new Salto solution.
The school previously used a mechanical access control system which was complicated to manage due to many keys becoming lost. This is a concern when stolen or misplaced keys could result in a security breach, as well as it being cost and labour intensive to replace locks.
To combat this issue, HVHS appointed a certified Salto installer, Beveridge Locksmiths Ltd, to fit nearly 100 Salto XS4 locks throughout the campus, including into their sports centres and classrooms. By combining this with the Salto Virtual Network (SVN) functionality, the school was able to start tracking where users were, and set up scheduled events such as doors locking at a certain time. This process of auto locking eradicated the possibility of human error, as if staff or contractor forgot to secure a door, the Salto system would automatically lock at a time specified by the school.
HVHS was also able to move away from mechanical keys, replacing these with key cards which they could manage (granting or blocking access, for example) from any computer within the school network.
Craig Braun, Business Manager at Hutt Valley High School, discusses the benefits of this new solution: “Salto’s XS4 locks have given the school huge functionality in terms of managing lost keys and programming auto closes each evening. We also use them extensively when allocating access times for sports coaches and teams who book space in our three gym complexes.”
Introducing new locking systems has enabled the school to grant access to not only internal but external users such as the sports teams mentioned above. This improves security management for the whole community and ensures the safety of whoever is using the campus at any given time.
“The school Principal, Ross Sinclair, has taken great comfort from the fact that all classroom doors are locked at the same time each day irrespective of what mode they are in at that time” says Braun. “This gives him piece of mind that teaching staff are safe if they are working after school hours.”
