A Texas-Sized Tower

May 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By KATE HENRY

The Renaissance Tower in Dallas is a gleaming tower of commerce whose exterior reflects, along with the blue sky and hot Texas sun, the hustle and bustle of life in the city's busy downtown business district.

Securing the 56-story, 1.8 million-square-foot structure, which serves more than 60 tenants ranging from high-profile law firms to 24-hour customer service call centers — and the tenant firms' more than 5,000 employees — is the responsibility of Willie Hall, who retired from the Washington D.C. police force and entered private security seven years ago.

Now in his fourth year as director of security for Renaissance Tower, Hall was brought on board in part to bring the facility's security up to a state-of-the-art standard, and after shepherding the building through a significant systems upgrade process, Hall now calls that challenge well met.

A Behemoth of a Building

“When I came on board, the systems in place were reasonably secure although a bit antiquated,” Hall recalls. “They needed some analysis and upgrading to bring them up to the standard we have now.”

Hall explains that security standards at Renaissance Tower are tailored to the security needs of the building's clients.

With such a large population and scope of security oversight, the challenges and risks Renaissance Tower faces are diverse — ranging from determining and verifying access privileges of enrolled security system users, to controlling the movement of vendors, couriers and contractors who enter the tower through docking or other non-primary entrances, to keeping a vigilant eye on the general public which floods into the building's food court area during weekday lunchtimes.

“The ‘variable’ visitors present the greatest risk,” Hall says, and the security team wears many hats, he notes. “Providing customer service first to our clients as well as to the public is at the top of our priority list.”

Toward that end, Hall provides his 27-person staff with both initial and ongoing training in a range of duties. Contract members of the team from Barton Security, Dallas, also benefit from the training they receive at Barton's standalone training center, Hall adds.

All members of the staff are trained in first aid and CPR procedures, and they serve as first responders in the event of medical emergencies or other incidents needing outside assistance.

Systems Savvy

Hall explains that in addition to a customer-service-oriented security approach, another key function of his team is working knowledgeably with the systems now in place, which have evolved over the past four years. He credits ease of use as a key benefit of the current systems.

“At the outset, we determined what our needs were going to be, but then it was a matter of finding the right firm to help us design and implement everything,” Hall explains.

Dallas-based systems integrator Secure Options fit the bill and was key to a number of upgrades, including the central access control upgrade, which took an existing DSX access control system and expanded it to accommodate three new, specific levels of access privileges which are assigned individually to system users — to the building itself, to the elevators and to particular floors.

The system now uses HID proximity cards and readers and handles about 7,000 users — all tenant employees plus additional regulars and vendors. A full-time security administrator is dedicated to administration of the system such as initial badging, accomplished with the help of Zebra Eltron printers, and maintenance, additions and deletions on-site in Renaissance Tower's security command center. The system's badging function is complete with user photographs that are stored in the system and displayed on a computer monitoring screen with every access activity, and additions, deletions and status changes are performed on-site in the security control center.

“We add or change between 300 and 400 badges per month,” Hall explains, “and we program access privileges only to the specific areas tenants request, whether one floor or many.”

Hall adds that a series of layered checkpoints helps to ensure strict security after hours: “First, a visitor must use a card to enter the building, then they must badge in at the security desk where their photo appears on a monitoring screen to be verified by the security officer at the desk, and then they must present their card to the elevators in order to activate them — the elevators will only operate if the requested floor is one to which the user has access privileges.”

Halls notes, too, that although Renaissance Tower is not in a “high-risk” geographic location, the access system is adaptable to varying threat levels that may be imposed by national security conditions.

Security staff also provide foot patrols of the building and of Renaissance Tower's 12-story, 1,000-plus-space parking garage, which is secured by a separate but compatible access system.

The DSX system has worked so well that several tenants have decided to secure their individual spaces using the same technology, Halls says. HID readers in the garage are compatible with both the building's and tenants' individual access cards.

All entrances and exits to the building, as well as stairwells and garage entrances, are further secured and monitored by surveillance cameras, which integrate with the access system and are monitored on-site in the main security command center.

There are more than 80 color cameras currently in use, explains Tom Liggett of Secure Options. A combination of Pelco, American Dynamics and Philips (now Bosch) cameras monitor both the parking garage and perimeter entrances in addition to interior spaces such as the lobby, elevator spaces, the plaza-level food court and other high-traffic areas. The cameras feed into American Dynamics matrix switchers and Robot multiplexers, where video is recorded on time-lapse recorders.

Liggett explains that the strengths of the systems are twofold: “First, they closely monitor tenant and visitor activity during business hours, and after hours, the systems ensure that all people must be personally cleared through several levels of security.”

A separate emergency management system provided by SimplexGrinnell provides tenants and visitors with further peace of mind, safeguarding functions such as fire and life safety and is also monitored by the security team on-site.

“Ultimately,” Hall says, “the best thing about the access system is its ease of use. Given the large number of users we have, we can effectively control their activity with a relatively small amount of training on the system — it is very user-friendly.”

For the Record

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Henry is an Annapolis, Md.-based writer and regular contributor to Access Control & Security Systems.

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

American Dynamics	5
Barton Security	6
Bosch (formerly Philips)	7
DSX Access Systems	8
HID Corp.	9
Pelco	10
Robot	11
Secure Options	12
SimplexGrinnell	13
Zebra Technologies	14

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