Door Industry Journal - Winter 2020

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 108 THE door industry journal winter 2020 Locks & Building Hardware Smarter Access for the Evolving Workplace Due to ongoing social distancing guidelines, many offices are currently standing empty or are minimally staffed. Colin Campbell, Managing Director of Codelocks, talks about what we can do to improve facilities as we prepare for the gradual return to work in a post COVID-19 world. Codelocks has been supplying convenient and secure access solutions to businesses for nearly thirty years. We’ve watched trends in office fit outs and facilities come and go, worked directly with customers to find the best solutions for their needs and adapted our range to meet new requirements. As we continue to look ahead, we consider the current situation and the challenges and opportunities we are likely to face. There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on our working lives. When social distancing measures were first introduced, most office workers quickly switched to remote working. The return to work is expected to be gradual, with physical contact being kept to a minimum. We can’t predict the longer-term effects – though it’s likely to be a game-changer for the way we work. In the meantime, while properties are standing empty, business owners, facilities managers and landlords have a chance to press the reset button and make changes and improvements to their offices. Securing the modern workspace If you’re looking for ways to upgrade your premises while they are lying empty, installing smarter access control is a good place to start. The landscape of the office has changed in recent years – with many featuring breakout spaces, shared meeting rooms, multi-purpose agile areas, and more. This new style of office brings new challenges for access control. With more open areas, it is harder for businesses to keep track of who is in the office at any one time. It can also be necessary to restrict access to some rooms. The solution we provided for Porsche Centre, Preston, perfectly illustrates how our smart access solutions can provide flexible access and different levels of security when required. Due to its showrooms and workshops containing high value cars and equipment, Porsche Centre needed a way to restrict and permit access to certain areas in line with its business hours and needs. We recommended our CL5500 smart locks, as the sophisticated NetCode technology enables staff to quickly generate and send codes for easy access. The locks’ audit trail data can also be downloaded and viewed – allowing the Centre Principle to keep track of who enters which lock-controlled room, and at what time.