Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Synchronized Timekeeping Solution

  • 06/01/17
Time keeping 

Saddleback College relied on American Time’s SiteSync IQ to synchronize clocks around the campus and ensure that classes, events and meetings started on time.

Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA, sits on 110 acres of rolling hills and serves more than 26,000 students. To keep students, faculty and staff on time, it relied on a wired clock system that was installed years ago when the campus was one-third the size of what it is today. With the expanded acreage and additional buildings, the college did not have consistent or accurate synchronized time.

Without clocks that displayed the same precise time, meetings and classes often started at varying times. Or participants would unknowingly arrive too late or too early. Saddleback College sought a synchronized timekeeping solution that would keep every clock in every building on the exact same time — down to the second.

The school selected the American Time SiteSync IQ wireless clock system using CDMA (code division multiple access) to synchronize time, along with a 40-watt controller and a combination of hard-wired and battery-operated clocks.

Saddleback College’s synchronized timekeeping solution can wirelessly synchronize and control any device with a signal circuit. The CDMA sync option allows SiteSync IQ to receive a time signal from a nearby cell phone tower, so there is no outside cable or wire installation needed. Saddleback College has guaranteed signal coverage with one transmitter, 100 percent FCC compliance, and pinpoint accuracy to NIST, the official world time. The school now has approximately 450 American Time clocks across campus.

“We have one signal that feeds the entire campus and our campus is very hilly. But we’ve never had an issue with anything,” says Jerry Doolittle, lead electrician at Saddleback College. “The clocks keep up automatically with daylight saving timing changes and they free up a lot of our maintenance staff’s time. No one notices the clocks anymore and that’s a good thing.”

www.american-time.com

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • University of Oklahoma Announces New Campus Master Plan

    The University of Oklahoma in Norman, Okla., recently announced that it will soon launch a new, comprehensive Campus Master Plan to guide the campus’ physical development during the next decade, according to a news release.

  • Chartwells Launches Campus Dining Evaluation Framework

    Contract food-service management provider Chartwells Higher Education recently announced the launch of BLUEPRINT, according to a news release. The evaluation framework was designed to provide a data-driven and customizable roadmap towards optimizing campus dining services and, by extension, the student experience.

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Photo credit - Chuck Coates

    Florida District Modernizes Central Energy Plants at Two High Schools

    Flagler Schools, a public school district in Flagler County, Fla., recently partnered with Matern Professional Engineering to modernize the central energy plants at two of its high schools, according to a news release. The project is part of a larger, district-wide effort to reduce energy costs and operational expenses.