Proximity system helps Salt River Project grow

Nov 1, 1997 12:00 PM, Staff

Utility company's access control system takes care of "a couple of years' worth of headaches."

Jim Trujillo knows access control. Within the last two years he has struggled with an aging proximity system and an outdated Wiegand swipe card system, evaluated several new access control systems, replaced old equipment with a different Wiegand card system, wrestled with resulting compatibility and operational problems, undergone a second product evaluation, and installed a new proximity access control system.

"It's been a couple of years of headaches; I've developed a thick skin," says the senior electrical engineer for the Electronics Systems Department of the Salt River Project (SRP). Based in Tempe, Ariz., SRP is a utility company that supplies more than 500,000 people in the Phoenix metropolitan area with water and power. The project includes six major dams, a 140-mile canal system, seven power plants and several administrative office buildings.

Cost-prohibitive,incompatible systems For years, SRP used access control systems at its administrative offices. Employees used a combination of two different products: a proximity access control system and a Wiegand swipe card system. Both systems met SRP's needs originally, but they were not able to support organizational growth.

SRP could not maintain or expand the systems without unacceptable expenses, Trujillo says. "Whenever we wanted to expand our former proximity system to another building, we had no way of linking the system to a central location, so we had to install a stand-alone workstation at each physical location," he notes. "Also, the cards themselves were expensive."

SRP experienced compatibility problems with its Wiegand system, a stand-alone setup with no centralized monitoring. According to Trujillo, new versions of the system were not compatible with older versions, forcing SRP to manually key card information into each system at several different buildings. "With 3,500 SRP employees, that's a lot of labor-intensive work," he says.

SRP's Wiegand equipment also used special encryption technology that made it proprietary, he adds, and this factor limited the organization's ability to expand the system and link it with other hardware.

The utility company decided to replace its outdated equipment with another Wiegand card system, lured by the promise that cards were compatible with the readers the company already had in place. But even more problems ensued. While the new cards used the same Wiegand format as SRP's previous cards, the supporting electronics' firmware did not accommodate the card numbers and required a higher operating voltage. As SRP struggled to get the new system operational, its previous Wiegand system (still installed at several locations) continued to be problematic. Employees at one company site in northern Arizona found their cards simply did not work in cold weather.

Teamwork Finally, SRP recommended to Omega Corporate Security, a Phoenix-based systems integrator, to install C*Cure 1 Plus, an access control system from the Access Control Division of Sensormatic Electronics Co. (formerly Software House). The system is equipped with ASP Advantage Series Proximity cards and readers from Motorola Indala Corp., San Jose, Calif.

A lack of centralized monitoring was the main problem for SRP security managers, says John Waxman, a senior project manager at Omega in charge of the C*Cure installation. "Because each of their locations had a stand-alone system, anytime they needed to input data they would have to physically drive out to the site."

Centralized monitoring is a key feature of SRP's new system, which includes C-Cure 1 Plus software, a DEC MicroVAX host computer, C*Cure stations (remote DEC workstations), Indala ASR-505 WallSwitch proximity stations and Indala AVC-132 Image100 proximity cards. The remote computer stations, used by guards at SRP's East Valley and West Valley administrative offices, are connected to the VAX central computer via SRP's existing internal fiber optic network, a chain of token ring Ethernet connections. According to Trujillo, employees display cards at the readers, which send data to an access control panel and ultimately to the VAX.

"SRP now has a system that is totally integrated throughout the region," Waxman said. "They can download data from their security operations center to both their East and West Valley offices. They also now have 24-hour, real-time monitoring of those locations from the operations center." The ability to monitor centrally and at each site gives SRP more control.

Proximity Not only is the operation of the new proximity access control system more efficient, the cost was competitive with other technologies and more reliable than the previous system, says Trujillo.

After evaluating several vendors of proximity card and reader systems, SRP chose to standardize company-wide with Indala's ASP products. Omega and SRP technicians have installed 30 proximity readers, which operate from 5v to 12v DC at 100mA, allowing SRP the flexibility to use power supplies currently deployed.

SRP also purchased 3,000 Indala AVC-132 Image100 proximity cards. The thin, credit-card-style cards can contain multiple ID technologies and are dye-sublimation printable, allowing the digitally stored photographs and graphics to be printed over the entire front surface of the card. SRP uses the C-Cure Vision system to produce badges with color photographs of its employees.

Using proximity technology also means that SRP need not worry about inclement weather, which can contribute to bad reads on the Wiegand swipe system. RFID tags function over a wide temperature range, and with no moving parts or contact between card and reader, the system is expected to have minimal maintenance costs.

Future standardization and expansion Omega recently finished upgrading two of SRP's eight office buildings to the new proximity access control system, but that is just the beginning. SRP plans to replace all its former systems with the new scaleable equipment, gaining functionality and eliminating the use of two incompatible systems.

Following a five-year upgrade plan, the company will install some 200 additional readers. In addition to outfitting all its administrative offices, SRP plans to incorporate some of its power plants and substations into the system as well, according to Trujillo. Expansion to SRP's dam sites is also a strong possibility. Strong teamwork and product compatibility are key to SRP's expansion plans.

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