Chelsea Creek is a new dockside development in London, by property developers St George. Offered are 24-hour concierge service and managed car parking. Door-entry and access control at the development is by Urmet.
St George needed a system for a phased, multi-block development that could operate on a site-wide IP backbone. The system needed to offer complete flexibility in terms of the number of concierges and where they were located. As with most developments of this nature, being able to relocate the concierge as the building work progresses is vital. An IP-based system now allows this by unplugging the RJ45 connector and moving the concierge PC to another location.
The developers needed a customised operating system that would allow each block to start with apartment number one, but still using only one concierge handset. Typically, this type of development would require the concierges to have multiple handsets on their desk – a common problem with traditional systems and something the developers were keen to avoid.
The system specified was IPervoice, Urmet’s IP door-entry platform. Urmet technical staff in Italy set about making a number of bespoke changes to the software that would allow the apartments in each block to start with a number one. This allows for multiple apartments starting with apartment one without the need for an extra prefix.
Other functions of IPervoice included:
Lift control – An added layer of resident security with Resident Lift Control for the penthouses. When entering the building, residents present their proximity token to any reader. This then calls the lift to the ground floor and automatically takes residents to their own floor. A similar function, operated via a remote lock release button on the video monitor in their apartment, also allows residents to send the lift to the ground floor when someone calls them. The Visitor Lift Control then only allows the visitor to select the floor they are visiting, which means they are prevented from entering the rest of the building.
RF car park control – all car park barriers are operated by radio frequency proximity tokens and are managed via the IPervoice front-end management system. This allows the user to control who goes into the car park – all from the comfort of their apartment. In contrast to conventional systems that require the manual registration of users, IPervoice RF barrier control will allow unlimited numbers of users to access the car park.
Remote access – Because the system works across a network, full remote diagnostics have been made possible. This can be very useful during the early days of any project when the concierge is perhaps still getting used to operating the system. Most traditional systems are stand alone and not connected to the network and would, therefore, require a site visit to fix any problems.
With Urmet’s range of IP products, all the blocks were inter-linked to provide instant, single-platform control for all access and security-related requirements. Apart from the fact that the entire development operates on a single platform that can also be rolled out to any new buildings added at the site – thereby avoiding the need to replicate and extend different systems. Urmet point to their product scalability and the fact that the entire system can be pre-configured off-site. This allows work with multiple contractors, particularly when the development is phased, as was the case here. Urmet’s Managing Director, Manji Gami, said: “We had to make some fundamental changes to our software to allow for the one concierge and lots of blocks starting with apartment number one – everyone will understand that problem. Until IPervoice, we couldn’t have achieved that solution with any of our other systems.”
For more information – email: [email protected] or www.ipervoice.co.uk.
