Executive Alarms have installed ACT access control equipment on more than 450 doors in a roll-out across multiple hospital sites in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
The project covers facilities ranging from a new £11m centre for adolescents with mental health problems in Headington to a brand-new adult unit with 80 beds in Aylesbury, built at a cost of £40m.
The Aylesbury facility, which was constructed by Kier Group, has merged multiple services onto the same site meaning that a wider range of clinicians and health professionals are available to patients. It opened in 2014.
The challenge for ACT was replacing the number of different legacy systems in use with a single solution across all properties. After Executive Alarms won the contract in open tender, their designers collaborated with ACT engineers to design and deliver the required solution.
The Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust are using the latest version of ACT’s management software, ACTenterprise. This is a role-based platform with functionality available to users according to their specific needs (e.g. installer, security guard, system administrator), a feature that increases overall security. The software is highly intuitive with the look and feel of a web browser experience. Full integration to ACT’s own VMS solution, ACTviquest provides additional real-time security.
Executive Alarms and ACT created a role-specific database structure for the client who were able to populate this from their existing software without any re-keying. This is a feature of ACTenterprise that is of considerable value to customers and can produce rapid return on investment (ROI) during migration.
The trusts ran parallel systems initially at small sites while security managers tested the new equipment in the field and found that it exceeded expectations.
Jason Thomas, Senior Engineer at Executive Alarms, said: “The key performance indicator here is that ACT have delivered a completely focused solution that allows central administration of previously fragmented systems and enables the client to obtain MIFARE cards themselves in a cost-effective manner.
The sites include high, medium and low security in-patient units as well as day care centres. The savings have been widespread and include the cost of the controllers over rival suppliers, a reduction in the number of engineer call-outs and rationalisation of system administration.”
