The Llyn Brenig Reservoir supplies water to north-east Wales and north-west England. Managed by Welsh Water, the reservoir also attracts around 190,000 visitors each year, who use the site for outdoor activities—an added security challenge.

The site now has padlocks, cylinders and keys from the Assa Abloy Cliq range. According to Nick Kite, Llyn Brenig’s site manager, Cliq is “a step up from ordinary locks. It gives us that extra flexibility and greater confidence.”

“The greater functionality of Cliq is very important,” continues Nick, “allowing us to change key access rights, download audit trails and remove missing keys as required.”

It’s a similar story at Helsingin Energia, one of Finland's largest energy companies which meets about 90 percent of the heating needs of the capital, Helsinki. In 2013, most of the openings throughout the company were secured with Cliq—around 3,500 interior and exterior doors across 70 different locations ranging from power plants to warehouses. Helsingin has around 1,250 employees and 1,500 contractors, with ever-changing access requirements.

“When employees arrive in the morning, they update their access rights. The audit trail for the previous day is collected at the same time,” says Mats Fagerström. Such transparency is an essential Cliq ingredient.

Another utility that has made the switch to Cliq is Stadtwerke München, the largest municipal company in Germany, with over 7,500 employees. It supplies Munich and its surrounding area with electricity, gas, water, and district heating and cooling.

The Munich installation includes around 11,000 Cliq locking cylinders, fitted across 5,000 grid transformer stations. Users now carry a single, programmable key that admits them to only the sites and areas they need. With a couple of mouse clicks, security managers at Stadtwerke München can trace every interaction between a key and a lock, across multiple secure sites. According to Thomas Mitterreiter, Project Manager in the Provisions and Operations department at Stadtwerke München, “Cliq fully meets our requirements for a locking system.”

In northern Germany, where almost quarter-of-a-million people rely on Stadtwerke Kiel for electricity, gas, water and district heating supply, the company installed around 10,000 locking cylinders to secure multiple sites. For Stadtwerke Kiel, a secure locking system that would be resistant to extremes of temperature and other severe weather was essential. Many of its secured openings are outdoors.

“We live in a world of diverse threats to our critical infrastructure,” says Kevin Hoare. “Vandalism, theft and deliberate sabotage are ever-present dangers. Security managers can’t eliminate those risks. But with Cliq installed, locks become the strongest link in their security chain, not the weakest.”