Often it’s the weather, perhaps a blizzard has dumped an unprecedented amount of snow in your area, or maybe it’s Tropical Storm Reno that just plowed through your local community. Whatever the situation is, along with the local roads, your building is now officially closed until further notice.

Many facilities rely on their Electronic Access Control system to unlock certain doors on a predetermined schedule throughout the workday. It helps employees gain access when needed and helps facilitate movement throughout the building as regular business necessitates. Some examples: The morning shift arrives to begin manufacturing operations for the day, and they are able to enter through the designated employee entrance which has automatically unlocked 15 minutes before their arrival. At the end of the day, the employees leave for home, and the designated door automatically relocks for the night, so your facility remains secure.

But what happens when that blizzard hits at 3 A.M. on a Tuesday? Your employees aren’t coming to work at 8 A.M. like usual, in fact, no one is going anywhere. But your existing Access Control system doesn’t know it snowed, so it opens the doors at 7:45 A.M. and your building is now empty with the exterior doors unlocked.

Modern Electronic Access Control systems, such as those manufactured by S2 (www.s2sys.com), have a simple and effective feature to prevent this very problem. The feature, called ‘First In Unlock,’ dictates that a verified credential must first be presented to the system before the scheduled automatic unlock will happen. Building facility managers, or others who are usually the first to arrive at the building, will be entered into a particular group which signals the system that the building is open for business. If someone from that group has not presented a valid key fob or access badge to any door reader first, then the automatic unlock event will never happen. This functionality can be tied to any access controlled door, or even gates which are set on a schedule.

The ability to leverage this powerful functionality goes even further. For instance, you can have a facility manager group which unlocks the doors to the warehouse floor, and an admins group that signals the system that the doors to the office areas in the building can now auto open. In this way, the back of the building can start operations at 6 A.M., while the front vestibule doesn’t auto unlock until 9 P.M. The same example applies to businesses with multiple facilities, allowing individual buildings to auto open only after certain criteria is met at that location. And what happens if a building needs to close early? No problem at all, just have a user from the designated ‘relock’ group flash his badge at each door currently open on a schedule and the door will relock again for the day.

Unexpected building closings are stressful enough, don’t let your Electronic Access Control system force you to come into work just to lock doors that should never have unlocked in the first place.

Digital Provisions specializes in upgrading legacy Electronic Access Control systems to the latest state of the art IP based systems, all with little or no disruption to your business. Contact us for further information, or if you have any questions at all on ‘First In Unlock’ functionality.