It creates challenges when a mechanical locking system grows organically over the years and managers at South Denmark’s Syrenparken mental health treatment facility no longer had a trustworthy overview of all their physical keys in circulation. Yet, to serve the people treated there, Syrenparken must store medicines and psychotropic drugs. It is critical only trusted personnel gain access.

As part of their modernisation programme, it was decided to upgrade on-site access control. One key aim was to replace old-fashioned keys, which can easily be lost, increasing the risk they fall into the wrong hands. Managers also wanted to make a working day more efficient for their trusted employees. They were each carrying three or four keys just to perform daily tasks in multiple areas of the site.

Syrenparken installed the Smartair wireless access control system from Assa Abloy to meet their security needs. To date, 143 Smartair wireless locking devices are fitted on resident bedrooms, as well as doors to offices, the medicine room and storage for patient records, plus other confidential areas. Staff and residents open doors with a standard, programmable Mifare credential.

System reliability was a key factor in their choice of Smartair, according to Henrik Jürs, Head of Syrenparken: "It is possible to put our access control system on a virtual server. Should a computer go down, we can put a new computer on and then we have access to it again.”

“We trust the data security,” he emphasises.

Another important parameter was flexibility in system management: Smartair makes it easy to administrate who should have access to which areas, and when. Instead of a bundle of keys, each employee has a key-card encoded with access rights to the exact areas they need. With Smartair, it’s easy to combine online and offline access management within the same installation. At Syrenparken, 133 offline Smartair escutcheons and 3 updaters, plus 8 offline Smartair cabinet locks, work side-by-side within the same system as 10 Smartair online escutcheons.

If a key-card is lost, it's quick to disable it and activate a new one. There is no danger anyone unauthorised will enter controlled medicine rooms with a lost card as a result. Because managers no longer need to call a locksmith to replace the compromised escutcheon, Smartair is also a cost-effective solution for Syrenparken.

Smartair deployment is ongoing at Syrenparken — and currently projected to reach a total of up to 200 doors.