NEXT GENERATION ACCESS CONTROL
Sponsored
SAY GOODBYE TO MECHANICAL KEYS
SALTO’s wire-free, easy to install products make it simple for locksmiths and security pros to upgrade and replace traditional mechanical-key-operated locks with the latest in electronic access control. Learn more at saltosystems.ca
Next Generation Access Control:
Optimizing building security and improving the tenant experience
Security leaders recently gathered for a roundtable to discuss the state of access technology today and some of the innovations that are shaping its future
Access control technology is rapidly evolving in sophistication, offering a range of new opportunities for residential and commercial buildings. But there are still a few growing pains that need to be addressed by the industry.
Growth is not uniform globally, either. Canada may be lagging behind other nations when it comes to technology in commercial and residential buildings, according to Tom Stutler, vice-president, security
operations at Cadillac Fairview.
As tenants travel abroad, they’re noticing that other countries are more sophisticated and nimbler in controlling entry via a range of innovations and practices, he said.
“If you travel to the U.S., we’re probably
seven years behind. If you travel to Dubai or Asia — probably a decade behind,” said Stutler during a Canadian Security roundtable discussion conducted in partnership with SALTO Systems.
That also means there is an opportunity
“When I unlock my phone with my face using biometrics, that enables this touchless experience.”
— Preston Grutzmacher, SALTO Systems
“There are ways to fully integrate and create that single source of truth that I think everyone benefits from.”
— Tom Stutler, Cadillac Fairview
to leverage proven technology and increase building security in a variety of ways. Ryan Lowe, building operations manager for Bosa Properties, said the COVID-19 pandemic meant there were many more deliveries coming into buildings, which moved quick and easy access to the front burner. A mobile app to control access was a key tactic it used to make everything more efficient.
“It allows our tenants to move seamlessly through the buildings, into their suites, into our amenity spaces,” said Lowe.
It also allowed for the delivery of virtual keys to delivery drivers or pet sitters, which really helped take the load off building management staff and put it into the hands of tenants, he said.
“ Two years ago, our building management team was spending hours and hours at the door, collecting parcels, delivering
them to suites, letting in delivery drivers or alerting tenants that a visitor is there (and) allowing them into the parkade,” said Lowe. “All of that has really been taken over by the access control aspect of the world.”
Preston Grutzmacher, residential business leader, North America, for SALTO Systems, said the technology that enables smart and remote access — including biometrics, where data resides and mobile and touchless—can feel “choppy” and disjointed.
“But I really kind of believe, over the next few years, they’re going to become one in the same,” he said.
While there are privacy-related concerns with biometrics, it “might not be what we expect,” said Grutzmacher. For example, there is one piece of biometrics that almost everyone has — face identification or touch ID on their smartphones.
“That is biometrics. As consumers, we’re really comfortable with using biometrics from these leading companies that absolutely value privacy,” he said. “When I unlock my phone with my face using biometrics, that enables this beautiful, digital, touchless experience for my phone for access control.”
That acceptance and adoption will likely lead to more comfort in general with using biometrics in other parts of life.
“It might become more commonplace to use those same technologies to take convenience a step further,” said Grutzmacher. For example, you can walk up to a panel and look at it — and that’s your authentication rather than looking at your phone first and then tapping it on the panel.
Andy Pope, vice-president, hardware, at JPW Systems, echoed the idea that smartphones have become ubiquitous in everyday life — with many people storing their credit cards on their phones to make purchases.
“ Why would we not use it to store our access to the building?” he said.
Most manufacturers of locks with integrated readers are now including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as a standard feature right out of the box, said Pope.
There’s also a sustainability angle with going digital, as it eliminates the use of onetime or disposable plastic cards, he said.
“ We’ve all been to fast-food outlets now and are getting paper straws, so we know that we’re trying to reduce our plastic and if it’s one more thing that a building can say as a, ‘Hey, come live here, we’re doing our part for the environment by reducing plastic’ it’s just another marketing tool for some of those facilities,” said Pope.
Integration
Getting in and out of buildings is one thing, but access technology can also be incorporated into other building systems — including surveillance, elevator control and environmental systems. Stutler said it really comes down to the appetite and the budget.
“ There are ways to fully integrate and create that single source of truth that I think everybody benefits from,” he said.
During COVID, people in real estate, HR and the C-suite started to ask for a lot more
data and saw the benefit of having it — but they also saw how siloed that information was, said Stutler.
“I really think that anybody’s roadmap, even if it’s aspirational, should show a full integration of all of these systems,” he said. And then it jumps to the next level — predictive.
“I think it opens up opportunities to be predictive, whether it’s maintenance or predicting what bad things might occur or just staffing optimization,” he said.
Rich Mackett, project development manager, INTEGR8 Building Technologies, said the interface with elevator control systems is often a sore point that takes a lot of integration know-how and custom programming — but the technology is improving.
“It’s that destination programming for elevators where you skip the floors to optimize the elevator usage,” he said. “Those types of systems don’t always integrate with sort of your floor-by-floor controls from your security programs.”
People want a seamless experience that gets them to their floor as fast as possible with multiple elevator options, he said.
Lowe said Bosa Properties is jumping into integration “full force,” pointing to a building in Seattle that recently opened that is fully integrated across the board.
“Access control destination dispatch was not the easiest feat in the world, but we did achieve it,” he said.
There are additional benefits that come with integration, including tying it into things like thermostats and location sensors that can help residents and tenants save money on energy by turning down the thermostat automatically when they leave.
“ With the location sensors and the phones and whatnot, it’ll detect when the resident is getting close to home — and it’ll kick their units back up so that it’s nice and cool when they get back into their suite,” said Lowe.
Even something like renting a piece of equipment can be controlled, and billed, based on usage by a tenant, he said.
Grutzmacher said it all ties into something that can be described as “tenant experience.” But he warned of app fatigue — even five years ago, people would have used
one application for a digital key, another for the video entry system and different ones to pay rent or message the property manager.
Consolidating all those disparate systems provides not just a better user experience, but an easier way to manage and track everything, he said.
Future of cards, fobs and physical keys
When it comes to abandoning pass cards and physical keys, some buildings might be able to move more quickly than others, said Stutler, who expects to see low usage of physical cards across the board in about a decade.
For example, a commercial building with a single employer that issues smartphones to all its employees might be able to make the switch quickly and be ahead of the curve. But a multi-tenant building, with nobody issuing corporate phones, will have a slower adoption, he said.
“I don’t think that any system is foolproof yet, and to the point where you want to tell your executives this mobile access works every time, because it will not work the one time they come in on Saturday and there was an upgrade on Friday,” he said. “And you’re going to wish that he or she had that card in their wallet. I feel a lot of us in the business that want to retire on a good note
are probably never going to authorize the only mobile credential.”
Lowe said that people over the age of 25 still want the hard key — a fob or card they can keep in their wallet in case their phone dies or something malfunctions.
“But when you look at the younger demographic, 24 and younger, they’re so reliant on their phones it would never die in their pocket, so they’re 100 per cent comfortable with only utilizing virtual keys,” he said. “We will still issue them a hard fob, a hard key to get in. Nine times out of 10 they will forget their phone at a friend’s house and they will have to call us because their fob is locked away in a drawer somewhere and they totally forgot they even had it.”
Pope said the physical or mechanical key provides a backup in cases of emergency where electronics fail. It’s also important to check building codes as they don’t necessarily embrace a digital-only world for access.
He’s even seen buildings not get a final sign off for occupancy because the suites did not have physical keys.
“ We’ve also seen buildings that didn’t put these in and, when that lock failed, the electronic lock, they basically were buying a new door because they had to damage it to get the resident into their suite,” said Pope.
THE KEY TO MULTIFAMILY ACCESS CONTROL: CONSISTENT RESIDENT EXPERIENCES
THE KEY TO MULTIFAMILY ACCESS CONTROL: CONSISTENT RESIDENT EXPERIENCES
Over the last five years, the multifamily industry has been adapting to an increasingly digital world. Multifamily proptech solutions, including modern access control, have made massive advances. Prior to COVID, adoption rates for new technologies that entered the multifamily market were often slowed by budget concerns and a lack of interoperability with other systems.
Today, smart buildings are commonplace, but an adoption gap has occurred in many multifamily communities. Adoption gaps occur when a property introduces a solution to solve a specific problem (e.g. main entrance access) but that solution is limited in its capabilities or is not implemented across the entire property.
Over time, these one-off solutions add up to a hodgepodge of apps, keys, devices, or credentials. Without in-house capabilities to plan, implement and manage systems integrations, property owners and managers often face significant hurdles. The challenges created by the adoption gap often impede the property from providing a seamless user experience at a time when resident expectations are higher than ever and evolving quickly.
Consider this scenario—Taylor, a discerning tenant, resides in an upscale downtown apartment. When she was choosing her apartment, security was a paramount consideration, and this building seemed to have it all. However, her daily reality is far from simple. To gain entrance, she must open a dedicated app, sign in, and swipe her screen to activate the main entry video intercom system. Once inside the building, she has to switch to a different app, activate digital keys, and tap her device to various readers as she moves through common areas, boards elevators, or accesses various amenities. Finally, to unlock her apartment door, she has a PIN pad.
Swipe. Tap. Pin. This cocktail of disparate systems leads to an inconvenient and inconsistent user experience, falling short of the seamless and smooth experience renters expect and deserve in our modern digital era.
Multifamily access control can become even more complicated when we look at mixing physical credentials with digital credentials. It can be a difficult challenge, if not impossible, for property managers to have the same keyfob work across different systems within the tech stack including video entry systems, interior access control, and unit smart locks.
I believe there is a better way to think about and plan for access control in multifamily, and it’s surprisingly simple—put the resident first.
If you shift the focus to streamlining and improving the resident experience, you will open new doors to tenant satisfaction and retention. The simple truth is that easy-to-use, convenient, and most of all, consistent resident experiences are essential to delivering on the promise of smart communities.
To achieve this, property developers should opt for open access control platforms that allow property managers to tailor resident experiences based on the unique needs of their local tenants. The key here is to ensure that a single credential can unlock all doors within the property, including access to common areas, amenities, gates, garages, elevators, rentable spaces, and individual units. This credential should be versatile enough to be a keyfob, keycard, BLUEtooth digital key, a NFCbased credential in their phone’s wallet application or even a simple PIN code.
A consistent user experience not only elevates resident satisfaction but also simplifies building management, ultimately creating efficiencies that reduce operating costs creating a win-win situation for all. The path to higher tenant satisfaction and retention lies in streamlining and personalizing the resident experience, and I believe that modern access control holds the key.
Preston Grutzmacher, Industry Solutions Leader – Multifamily & Residential, SALTO Systems
The XS4 Original+ is the next generation of SALTO Systems’ most trusted and widely used electronic locks—now including Hardware Secure Element (HSE) technology.
Say goodbye to mechanical keys. Get the latest security features and advanced capabilities with shorter product delivery lead times.
Learn more at saltosystems.ca
