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Electronic Access Control Improves Safety

  • 02/01/17
Jones County Junior College

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 .

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