More Than Just A 3,000-Employee Badging SolutionEastec, Inc. won a $750,000 project by integrating a client's time and attendance, access control, and security systems.

Eastec, Inc. (Wall, NJ) is a security integration company that concentrates on integrated computerized access control, closed circuit television (CCTV), identification badging, and security systems. After completing some work for a Fortune 100 company, Eastec was asked to bid on a job for one of the customer's affiliate headquarters. This location had approximately 3,000 people, including full- and part-time employees, contractors, visitors, vendors, and temporary employees, accessing the customer's campus of 12 buildings. "The company would go through approximately 40 temporary employees per week, all of whom needed new ID badges created with an outdated cut-and-paste system," explained Eastec President Fred Pierce. The ID badges included a photo and a bar code sticker that enabled the user to swipe the card through time and attendance and access control terminals. Through an internal security audit, the company discovered that the bar codes on these ID cards were easily reproduced on a copier.

The customer decided it needed to revamp its existing access control and ID badging solutions and contacted three integrators about the project. "Although I'm not sure, I'd have to say we won the job because we proposed a total solution that integrated the client's time and attendance, access control, and security systems," Pierce said.

Limit Access Control With Proximity ID Cards
The first step toward making Eastec's solution succeed was to install a new ID card printer. For this portion of the project, Eastec turned to distributor Wynit (Syracuse, NY) and purchased a FARGO (Eden Prairie, MN) DTC525 card printer for printing dual-sided cards. "The client's human resources and security departments asked for a card printer that could print both a photo and the specific bar code used for their time and attendance system," Pierce said. "We were able to do both and provide them with a more aesthetically pleasing ID card by using the FARGO printer."

The new ID badge system used HID (Irvine, CA) proximity (i.e. non-contact) cards that were used in conjunction with the 80 HID ProxPro access control readers Eastec sold and installed. After some minor training on the printer's functions, the client began printing the initial 3,000 cards.

Don't Forget To Integrate CCTV
In addition to the access control and ID badging portions of this project, Eastec also installed a new CCTV system that spanned the entire campus. Prior to this, the customer had only one building equipped with an analog CCTV system that included six black-and-white fixed (i.e. stationary, unable to rotate) cameras. The new system included:

• a total of 64 color cameras including PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) dome cameras from Pelco (Clovis, CA) and fixed cameras from Philips CSI (Lancaster, PA)
• a digital video recorder from Integral Technologies (Indianapolis)
• Checkpoint (Thorofare, NJ) Threshold Enterprise access control software.

The CCTV system was fully integrated into the access control system. For example, if someone tries to access a portion of the campus they are not authorized for, an alarm sounds. Immediately, a graphic display of the alarm site's floor plan comes up on the security department's monitors. The Checkpoint software then automatically takes control of the nearest camera in the building and (if movable) points it at the alarm site.

A Project That Continues To Grow
Pierce said this project took 18 months to complete and cost approximately $750,000. In addition, Eastec sold the customer a full maintenance/service agreement for the entire system. However, the job is far from over. "After the initial project, the customer had us install another 50 access control readers at a location in another state that was connected to the headquarters' wide area network," Pierce said. "Since then, we've been continuing to add more components to the headquarters' system as the company expands into more buildings and renovates existing spaces."