Ports of Jersey upgrade to smart access control at St Helier harbour

Ports of Jersey operate the island’s busy harbours and airports, providing high-quality services and facilities to enrich the experiences and journeys of their customers, with Jersey Marinas offering 1,000 berths across three award-winning locations close to the vibrant waterfront at St Helier.
At very busy times of the year, such as the annual Jersey Regatta, the sheer volume of visitor traffic arriving from both land and sea can present serious problems. With particular challenges arising from managing car parking, and the issuance of port entry digital keys for boats harbouring.
Ports of Jersey needed a smart access control solution capable of managing short-term parking at St Helier harbour. The system needed to be intelligent enough to manage complex bookings for use by berth and mooring holders dropping off and loading gear onto boats, before parking elsewhere long-term. The existing solution was no longer cost effective and was open to abuse by some users.
In addition, Ports of Jersey also required an upgrade to the out of date Jersey Marinas security gate access control system. At peak times this system needed to be able to cope with rapid, high capacity issuance of smart cards to vessel owners and boat crews wishing to access the marina and marina hospitality faculties.
SALTO partner JMH Technology was asked to provide a new car park access control solution and resolve the looming problem of needing to issue 1,000 cards, at a cost of over £100,000. A replacement car park access control system was installed based on new technology smart cards and 2,000 cards issued. This project was highly cost-effective with installation and card issuance totalling less than just card issuance on the previous system. Future savings also assured thanks to a choice of more cost-effective cards. Abuse of short-term parking has been cut, and the experience for visitors is improved.
To drive yet more efficiency and further reduce overheads the system has subsequently been updated at both St Helier and Albert Pier car park, with smart installation of the latest SALTO access control technology. The upgrade continues, and JMH Technology is in the process of adding more reader-controlled doors and smart handles across the facility.
A full security assessment was carried out at Jersey Marinas, and a decision taken to replace all of the expensive and temperamental mechanical code locks with a full online access control system. By engineering a bespoke solution that integrated a SALTO kiosk system with a touch screen unit interface, Jersey Marinas staff are now able to allocate more than 500 cards during the high-tide window. With extra capacity on tap when they need it to cope with high demand at peak times, and valuable cost savings made.
The SALTO system provided is technically robust and cost-effective to expand. As a partitioned system Ports of Jersey now have a global overview, with each department able to see the section relevant to them.  This enables micro-management of cost savings across equipment and cards and allows staff to get permissioned access to all necessary parts of the Ports infrastructure without delay.