Electronic Access Control Improves Safety
Lowering lost key costs and reducing thefts were just two
of the benefits Jones County Junior College noticed after
installing locks from Allegion.
Jones County Junior
College (JCJC), an accredited
two-year college in Ellisville, MS,
houses about 850 students per year in its
residence halls.
With new students enrolling each
semester, key management can become an
expensive security issue. Keys are issued at the
beginning of the semester, but several are misplaced
throughout the year. Each lost key costs
JCJC $150 in material and labor to replace.
This became a recurring issue for Smith
Hall residents. Rather than spending thousands
of dollars replacing all 108 locks, Joseph
Van Tuggle, director of Men’s Housing
at JCJC, explored electronic access control.
Hoping to increase security but keep costs
down, Tuggle turned to the Schlage® NDE
Series electronic lock from Allegion.
In July 2015, JCJC’s new system included
Schlage AD-400 wireless electronic locks
and NDE Wireless Cylindrical Locks with
ENGAGE™ technology. AD-400 locks were
added onto 26 suite doors and NDE Series
locks were installed on 82 bedroom doors.
“After installing the NDE Series, we
utilized the ENGAGE cloud-based mobile
application to view who accessed specific
doors, enabling us to better investigate
reported thefts and break-ins,” Tuggle says.
AD Series locks are made for openings
that separate public areas from restricted
areas, making it the ideal solution for suite
doors at JCJC. The NDE Series is easy to install,
manage and use, and was developed
for facilities — like campus residence and
tenant units — interested in upgrading to
electronic credentials. With built-in WiFi,
NDE Series locks can connect directly to an
existing network, enabling automatic updates,
access privileges and event history.
In the two years before installing
the NDE and AD series locks, JCJC had
five thefts reported in Smith Hall, which
equated to an estimated cost of $500-$1,000 per incident. Since then, there have
been no reported thefts in the dorm.
Due to its success, JCJC now plans to incorporate
Schlage products from Allegion
in two other buildings.
www.allegion.com
This article originally appeared in the issue of .