24 Jan 2013
Introduction

The Lycée Ismaël Dauphin School in Cavaillon France is a large boarding school with over 1,000 students. Built in 1959, it comprises an extensive complex including administrative offices, 37 classrooms, 8 laboratories and 8 computer rooms together with two language centres. In addition there are conference and meeting rooms along with boarding houses for the students and extensive sports halls.

The brief

Due to the size and complexity of the site, the existing traditional key system was proving difficult to manage with replacements and cutting requirements taking up time and generating expense and security worries.

To resolve this, school management wanted to upgrade to an access control system that was cost-effective to install and capable of growing with their needs. The system needed to be able to withstand daily use in a school environment and permit each student to have a personal card with which to pay for services, such as lunch, photocopying, taking out library books etc.

The solution

To provide a single comprehensive solution to cover all the schools needs, it was decided to install the PegaSys intelligent access control system in conjunction with Mifare cards.

This new system has been used to secure all the classrooms, offices and boarding school access points as well as dormitories. Over 150 locks have been installed, all served by the Mifare cards which embrace many different functions. The system is controlled from a central location allowing simple reprogramming of the cards, to amend access settings and to block very quickly lost cards. Employees and students now have one card each which permits access to accommodation blocks, buildings and classrooms as well as enabling them to use the card to pay for all services within the school and thereby negating the need to carry cash.

Most educational facilities are reliant on traditional mechanical key systems, which are difficult to control and expensive to maintain when security is breached. Conversely hard¬wired electronic access control systems can be complex and expensive to install, which often rules them out as a viable option. PegaSys is designed to provide a simple solution to common access control and key management problems, such as replacing cylinders when keys are lost, unauthorised key duplication and the inability to track who went where and when.