Toronto Skydome

Jul 1, 1997 12:00 PM, By JAMES WHITTALL

SkyDome is Toronto's premier event facility. The 67,000-seat stadium is home to the Argonauts (Canadian Football League), the Raptors (National Basketball Association), and two-time World Series Champion Toronto Blue Jays. It plays host to every conceivable big-draw attraction - from rock concerts, operas and film festivals, to monster-truck rallies, professional wrestling matches and three-ring circuses. It is also one of Canada's most impressive engineering achievements, being the world's first and only structure of its kind to have a fully retractable roof. When the weather is good, the 11,000-ton dome can be rolled back to uncover the complete field area and more than 91 percent of the seats.

Understandably, SkyDome presents a sizable challenge to its security personnel. Because it is an event-based facility - that is, it operates only during planned exhibitions - standard nine-to-five access control procedures are ineffective. Compounding this problem are other, equally critical issues.

SkyDome has 15 street-level gates, some of which provide elevator service to restricted floors within the facility.

The SkyDome Hotel, built into the side of the stadium, has its own guest and staff entrances.

The 17,500 parking spaces in underground and open-air lots require surveillance to prevent theft and vandalism.

Several restaurants attract diners at all hours of the day. And a steady stream of concessionaires, administrators, maintenance crews, sports figures, managers, coaches and tourists provides a constant source of concern for the people who are responsible for their safety.

When SkyDome opened to the public in 1989, several stand-alone computer systems were acquired to manage the profusion of security details:

* A photo ID solution was selected to produce identity cards for the 3,000-plus employees, team members and tenants. * The parking lots and entrances were equipped with 36 rotating and stationary CCTV cameras, integrated to eight monitors. * Magnetic stripe card readers were installed in all elevators to control access to secured floors. * Gates were equipped with door locks and alarms to ward off illegal entry from the street.

Finally, the readers, locks and alarms were wired to a central access control database.

All was state-of-the-art equipment at that time. All was supposed to be expandable. And all, as it turned out, was poorly supported by resellers who would eventually go out of business or lose interest in the service contracts.

When that happened, says SkyDome director of security Kelly Keyes, "things deteriorated very quickly."

"By early 1996," Keyes explains, "we realized our security systems were falling to pieces. We could no longer purchase film or other materials for badging because our only supplier went bankrupt. As for access control, we literally had to shut down all the alarms and door locks whenever the stadium opened for an event.

"To make matters worse, the wiring was not properly installed or maintained, so glitches were popping up all over the place. What we originally thought was an investment in leading-edge hardware quickly became money spent on the upkeep of out-of-date and malfunctioning technology."

Keyes began her search for an integrated security system to include: badging, access control and CCTV solutions linked across one network, using a common database.

When the quotes began to arrive, however, she discovered the all-in-one approach was "too expensive, well beyond anything we would need, and still wouldn't offer the features we were looking for." Reluctantly, she turned again to stand-alone technology. In retrospect, Keyes is glad she did. Here's why.

The badging solution A replacement badging system was Keyes' first priority. Blue Jays season - the busiest time of the year for ID card production - was fast approaching, and SkyDome's existing solution was essentially useless without the appropriate supplies.

Several companies placed bids, and the contract was awarded to IDenticam Systems, a Toronto-based provider of integrated security imaging hardware and software products.

Keyes bought a Pentium PC equipped with an Integral Technologies FlashPoint video capture board; a Sony Handicam for image acquisition; a Fargo Persona ID card printer with an internal magnetic stripe encoding module; and Episuite for Windows, a photo ID software system developed by G&A Imaging Ltd.

The decision to buy from IDenticam was partly based on its software offering. Episuite is an open badging solution that runs on stand-alone and networked Windows platforms, using Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) standard for information storage. It can be connected to access control systems that send RS232 commands to card readers and door locks. It accepts digital photos from video cameras, scanners, and other databases that store bitmap images, and it outputs ID cards to Windows-compatible printers.

Keyes and her staff performed the software installation and hardware configuration themselves, forgoing a hired systems integration specialist.

The access control conundrum Once the badging workstation was operational, Keyes turned her attention to SkyDome's ailing access control system. The project turned out to be complicated. "We didn't know that our existing comm cables were too long, and some of the wiring was disintegrating and had to be replaced. Many companies refused to bid when they inspected our facility and discovered this," she notes.

To complicate matters further, many vendors had to be turned away because they did not offer "event-mode" processing, that is, the ability to activate or disable certain gate alarms and card readers during scheduled events.

In an effort to expedite the process, Keyes and her security supervisor, Jennifer Osborne, revised their proposal to contain a "wish list" that each interested party was obligated to discuss.

Items included: * replacing only the substandard wiring while using the existing comm cables in the integration of the new system; * development of software that would turn specific elevators, magnetic locks and gate alarms over to event mode, i.e., shut down, with a single command; * automatic CCTV surveillance triggered by alarm; * SkyDome's and the supplier's maintenance responsibilities; * a 24-hour service guarantee; * complete history reports for individual alarms; * magnetic lock releases during fire alarms - a necessity that would bring SkyDome up to the current Ontario building code; * compatibility with the badging database; * a complete installation plan, by quadrant and level, with milestones; and * training for system administrators and alarm system coordinators. The strategy worked. Within days, vendor Keepsafe Protection Services, Toronto, returned a satisfactory bid on the Edicon Envoy 200.

The access control solution The Edicon system is a stand-alone, PC-based access control system for small to medium-size organizations. It monitors alarms and electronically stores and manages individual access records and events for up to 64 readers and 4,000 cardholders.

In anticipation of SkyDome's event mode prerequisite, Edicon designed a custom software program to work with a standard, 24-hour alarm system.

The stadium's annual schedule was entered into the database, along with shutdown and startup times for the door locks, card readers and alarms. The schedule was then associated to data entry tags.

To activate the system, security personnel were instructed to type in any one of the data entry tags - for example, "Blue Jays" - and the software would automatically read the planned operation hours for that day, then mask specific devices for the duration of the event. (Masking "fools" the access control system into registering a shutdown of alarms and door locks, when, in fact, these devices are still functioning.)

Keepsafe installed Mag-Tek RS232 swipe readers at all of SkyDome's access points, using much of the facility's original wiring. Relay outputs were added and configured to close a contact when a gate alarm is triggered. The dry contacts were then hard-wired to SkyDome's new Pelco CCTV system alarm inputs, to provide automatic surveillance during an illegal entry attempt.

The complicated integration plan led to conflicts in scheduling, since many of the elevators and gates were out of service when the stadium opened for a game. Tensions increased when the access control software started to develop problems.

"It was a rocky installation, and we still have a few wrinkles to iron out," Osborne admits. "Sometimes, the software gets confused and forgets which mask is functioning at what time. We've had our main gate go into alarm while people were still coming into the stadium. When that happens, the operator has to shut down the alarm manually. But we expected that type of thing. Our new system is very complex, so bugs were bound to occur. Edicon has assured us, however, that everything will be running smoothly by late July.

And when that time comes, Osborne adds with a laugh, "we'll be the envy of security supervisors everywhere."

How it all works together SkyDome's badging and access control systems are currently stand-alone, so their interaction is limited to shared ID/employee numbers for card access.

Keyes' team produces 25 distinct styles of badges - more than 3,000 every year. These styles are differentiated by color-coded security symbols, signifying the department to which the cardholder belongs.

Before card production begins, each of SkyDome's 12 managerial departments, and all its tenants, are allocated blocks of ID numbers. When a badge for a specific department or tenant is created, it is associated with the starting and ending numbers of the assigned block, which comprise the badge's automatic "from/to" ID number generation parameters.

Printing is done in batches, by department, with the appropriate ID number encoded on each card's magnetic stripe.

Once production is complete, Keyes' workstation operators export the new ID numbers from Episuite and import them into the Envoy 200. The badges are then issued to SkyDome employees and tenants and must be swiped to gain admission to the facility - particularly in elevators, where integrated card readers control access to restricted floors.

Before SkyDome opens to the public every day, security personnel enter the pertinent data tag, and the stadium automatically turns over to event mode. Gate alarms and locks are masked for the duration of the event, while the remaining tenant and employee access points continue to operate. The mask is automatically canceled when the event is over, reactivating gate security. The Pelco cameras and monitors remain fully independent, with the exception of relay outputs to the access system.

"I'm happy with the way things turned out," says Keyes. "Going with stand-alone systems was a good decision. We got all the features we were looking for at a fraction of the cost of an integrated solution."

But was non-integration the wisest choice? Jennifer Osborne admits that "a lot of people say we're nuts for doing this. But integration wasn't practical. We produce a phenomenal number of badges, especially during Blue Jays season. That means our photo ID database is constantly being updated, and when a database is updated, you get file locking. In the final analysis, I was concerned the access control system would not operate properly."

But by next year, Keyes and Osborne plan to upgrade to a fully networked and integrated solution, with the current badging system acting as the glue that binds the disparate access control and CCTV hardware.

"We'll have security personnel at all our access points to monitor entries by computer," Keyes concludes. "The new system hardware will be installed by this summer, along with a Pelco microswitcher. We should have the system completely integrated across a network, with all the software upgrades, by 1998."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR James Whitall is director of communications for G&A Imaging.

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