Cape Town, 23 Aug 2016
Taking place at Fairmont's Zimbali Hotel in KwaZulu-Natal from 4 to 7 September, the CAMPROSA (Campus Protection Society of Southern Africa) conference is the premier industry event for campus security in the educational facility sector. Powell Tronics will once again have a strong presence at the conference as both an event sponsor and an exhibitor.
Addressing issues such as forensics and emergency response, together with panel discussions and a review of lessons learned from the recent unrest experienced in the 'Fees must fall' campaign, the CAMPROSA conference is a valuable source of information for risk and security specialists tasked with campus protection.
According to John Powell, CEO of Powell Tronics, the company has experienced increased interest in its product range from the campus protection sector, with a number of its hardware and software solutions installed in a number of campuses countrywide. Furthermore the company has been fortunate to have developed strong relationships with premier dealers and contractors that are focused on providing solutions and service to this industry.
With the goal of expanding its current footprint in the educational sector and highlighting shortcomings in the security industry, Powell Tronics will be displaying a number of its reputable access control brands. "We will be demonstrating walk-in solutions for educational sector access control that include the recently launched Impro Portal range, Golmar IP intercom systems, Safran Morpho's new Sigma Lite finger print biometric terminal and our own, PT-AD, PT-MS, PT-GUEST and PT-Rollcall software," says Powell.
Campuses can enhance visitor management with PT-GUEST which scans and decrypts South African driver's licences and then seamlessly integrates the data with the Impro IXP400 ImproNet and Portal range of access control system. PT-GUEST is available in multiple formats for visitor entry, including one-time pin (PAC), proximity card issue and biometric enrolment, all conducted at the main gate entry points via portable devices.
Together with scanning in the visitor's full name and ID number, the scanner also stores a photograph of the visitor on the database, so visual verification is provided. It can also scan all the available information encoded into the vehicle's licence disk. The full enterprise PT-GUEST solution also has the ability to pre-register guests through either the customer's intranet or via SMS.
Replacing what was traditionally a very manual process, PT-Rollcall, when combined with a biometric fingerprint enrolment on an access control backbone, allows university staff to enrol each student on to the database. Through PT-Rollcall's integration, prior to each examination taking place, the students are required to present a valid and verifiable fingerprint in order to enrol at a particular examination venue. Each system is customised to suit the specific educational campus to ensure full compatibility and integration with the university's own management database systems. The combined information is uploaded and populated onto mobile biometric devices.
Added value to the obvious benefits of an electronic enrolment process are the elimination of third parties illegally writing examinations for registered students and ensuring that all present, including the invigilator, are indeed in the correct venue at the correct time for the correct examination.
PT-Rollcall provides various management reports which will include comparison of the number of students expected to sit for the examination versus the actual number of students present. Other information will include the names of invigilators and the venue. Again, customisation is a given and a full audit trail is provided on the software and processes on the mobile device.
The company's special projects technical sales manager, Frazer Matchett and Johannesburg sales manager, Alastair McPhail, will share their knowledge with the delegates. "Our solutions are all about integrating technologies to add value to the renowned products that we distribute throughout South Africa and Africa. We strive to provide high-level support to ensure that risks are alleviated through the optimum control and management of large solutions for higher education facilities, academic staff, students, contractors and visitors," he adds.
"We will leverage the vast experience we have gained on very large projects in this sector using the IMPRO, SAFRAN MORHO and GOLMAR products. The main challenge that suppliers and integrators like ourselves face when providing solutions for these types of sites is typically the large number of users, students doors, buildings, hostels and faculties. For example, many of these institutions have more than 20 000 users in the database, 1 000 plus doors and require sophisticated integration to their specific management suites. As mentioned earlier, fortunately we have partnered with a number of qualified contractors, with a vast number of references, that we are happy to recommend to end users, thereby alleviating any issues," Powell concludes.
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