Bringing Peace of Mind and Automation to the University of Essex

Nathan Baroni, Security Systems & Building Manager, and Marc Lee, Deputy Head of Security & Campus Safety, from the University of Essex talked to us about why they rate AC Leigh as a trusted supplier of security and access control solutions. In particular, they tell us why SALTO is their number one choice. Nathan and Marc talk about the great support and expertise they have received from AC Leigh, and the positive impact of their SALTO solution on the day-to-day running of the campus.

The University of Essex is ranked 58^th in the global Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024, which ranks more than 1,400 universities around the world. It is in the UK top 10 for research quality in four subjects (Grade Point Average, REF2021) and in the UK top 10 for research power in five subjects (Times Higher Education 2022). Needless to say, it’s a University with ambition and a fresh and innovative approach to higher education.          

Marc has been working at the University since 2009 and recalls “When I came here 15 years ago, there were only about 10 SALTO doors and now we have over 406: 306 at the Colchester campus and 100 in Southend and Loughton campuses. It has made our day-to-day operations much smoother.

“The system offers peace of mind of automation and, with end-users being captured via the database, this means less man hours being taken up with tasks. The ability to audit trail quickly and easily, and the just general great all-round system, means the SALTO technology has really improved things here. Plus, it’s reduced the amount of metal key wastage too.”

The goal at the University of Essex is to have every campus networked and as many doors as possible online. Currently, that figure stands at 60% and Marc notes that “When I took over the service in 2018, I think we had about 70% of SALTO doors on the main Colchester campus offline, which is quite difficult when you’re pushing for updates: you’ve got to manually go around and update everything. So, we’ve slowly converted that to the biggest percentage now networked and it’s working really well”.

AC Leigh’s access control system has brought the University significant control over its buildings, as well as cost savings when it comes to labour saving measures. As an example, the life sciences building has at least 50 different types of science lab used by different cohorts of students that all require security measures and restricted access. It was the case, before the SALTO doors were installed, that they would be buying tens of thousands of pounds worth of metal keys to maintain security. However, with SALTO you can do this simply by changing the access lists for networked doors. As Nathan notes, “cost saving and security are probably both number one” in terms of benefits to the University, but it’s also hugely beneficial for “…the ability to audit for space usage and for security and for ISO accreditation… if the fire alarm goes off, we know the door will open”.

With an ISO accredited building, the University of Essex must meet stringent security measures and the SALTO system supports this. Nathan comments that “by our SALTO not just working as it should, but being able to audit and log, we’ve got read-in and read-out areas so we can do capacity monitoring. Only because SALTO is there has it enabled us to do that”.

When it comes to AC Leigh’s engineers, Nathan notes that they are “always spot on”. “We’ve got to meet most of the crew at some point and we always recommend AC Leigh. We’ve forged an excellent working relationship”.

When it comes to issue resolution, Nathan notes that any “snagging” has “always been sorted out as quick as you’d expect. I don’t think we’ve ever had an issue that hasn’t been resolved well and quickly in terms of service from AC Leigh. In fact, the only issue we’re finding is with limitation of the system, and it’s probably going to be quite a unique problem to us because we’ve got so many different stakeholders here.

“Everybody wants to use it differently and we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of user access levels and hundreds and hundreds of time periods and time zones because nothing is standard and we can’t change the way the university operates: we’ve got different types of students, undergraduates, PHD’s, and they’re all doing different courses. They operate anytime within a 24 hour window. It’s not as simple as a school, for example, which is just 9:00 to 5:00. 

“Overall SALTO is a really good system and we would give our access control solution an 8 out of 10. We would definitely recommend AC Leigh, I’ve never had a bad experience from the engineers or or customer service, or anything like that. In fact, we would give AC Leigh 9.2 out of 10”.