Pat Jefferies, Commercial Director at Abloy UK, highlights the importance of hands-free access control solutions and their significance in securing buildings, reducing the potential transfer of infection and increasing the public’s confidence in leaving the comforts of their home, to help restart the economy.
Pat Jeffries, Commercial Director, Abloy UK
Prior to 2020, hands-free solutions were already on the radar to be the future of innovation in security technology, but with recent events the importance of bringing hands-free to today’s society is greater than ever.
With the public’s lack of confidence and the need for businesses to become operational, there is a fine balance between health and the economy. Normally, the need to change is met with reluctance, however people and business are showing great resilience and willingness to adapt in these circumstances.
To get businesses back into operation, social distancing, controlled access and sanitary stations have all been introduced as standard safety measures. The security industry has the opportunity to build confidence with innovative hands-free solutions and help to create the safest conditions possible, so how can we adapt and meet the new demands with the new procedures in mind?
A hands-free solution
The answer is to turn to a mix of access control technologies – old and new – to enhance safety measures such as social distancing, sanitary stations and controlled access.
Though automated access has existed for a long time, it’s never been more important or in demand. It’s a simple measure that businesses can introduce to help protect their customers and employees.
Likewise, contactless entry combines the benefits of door automation and access control. Presenting a digital key or card to a reader not only signals for it to open but will also notify you when the door is once again secure. This can be installed to fulfil compliance requirements and generate an audit trail.
Smartphones also work well as keys, preventing cross-contamination as people don’t need to touch anything other than their own device. The key revolution to use smartphones looked like the solution of the future, but its importance now is clearer than at any other time.
In addition, dynamic lockdown technology, which is usually only implemented in emergency situations, can be repurposed to monitor capacity and reduce overcrowding. This can prevent ingress once a certain capacity is met, while still allowing egress with the automatic door system.
Security leading the way
As a sector, we should actively promote solutions that will help organisations to operate as ‘normally’ as possible while helping to reduce the risk of infection. We don’t know what the next few months will bring, so implementing hands-free access will allow you to prepare and respond to any future safety measures.
The security industry has been developing and offering these solutions for some time, but 2020 has been the catalyst to implement these solutions today. Combining door automation and access control allows us to utilise hands-free entry. A contactless interaction with the door operator would initiate a sequence to open the door and then secure the access point after entry.
It’s important to consider that despite numerous other pressing priorities, many solutions must be compliant.
Compliance needs to be integral to all panic and escape door solutions. Hands-free escape doors would still require a compliant escape handle for emergency situations and fire doors would need to meet fire testing and ironmongery compliance.
