Here’s How Rock Hill School District Expanded Its Lockdown Capabilities
This K-12 district in South Carolina enhanced school security by integrating door hardware that enables remote lockdown at secondary perimeter doors.
Before the upgrade, the primary openings or main entrances were controlled through the access control system, but the remaining perimeter doors needed to be secured manually.
In K-12 facilities, mechanical dogging and undogging is prominent at arrival and dismissal time to facilitate the flow of traffic. A door is dogged, or unsecured when the push pad of the exit device is depressed on the interior side of the door and a key is rotated to keep the push pad in that position. Prior to the launch of the RU option, the only way to secure, or undog, a door was to physically return to it and manually lock it. This is an often-overlooked scenario in lockdown planning.
The Von Duprin RU retrofit kit for exit devices is a cost-effective solution for secondary openings that enables remote locking (undogging) for centralized lockdown. This enables staff to initiate an immediate campus-wide lockdown from a secured location instead of putting themselves in harm’s way to manually undog doors throughout the building. Integrated request to exit (RX), latch bolt (LX) and door position switch (DPS) signals are included in the kit to provide confirmation of the security status of the door.
There’s also a “dog on next exit” feature, which means that the door will remain unlocked the first time someone depresses the push pad of the exit device to leave that space. So if the door is secured in the evening, the next day staff simply depress the push pad to unlock the door. This makes daily lock-up easy and reduces the need to distribute keys to staff. Additionally, The RU kit connects wirelessly via Bluetooth Low Energy to Allegion’s ENGAGE Gateway, providing real-time, bi-directional communication to the access control software. RU is a modular battery powered kit that can be added to existing Von Duprin 98/99 and 33A/35A Series devices.
Once the products were installed, the Von Duprin RU seamlessly integrated with the district’s access control software. This allows the schools to secure doors at any time, along with the rest of the locks that are connected to the access control software. It greatly simplifies lockdown procedures by reducing the need to manually tour the building.
“Before, security trumped convenience,” says Lacy. “Now schools can balance the two—keeping students and faculty safe while improving efficiencies for the staff. Removing the need to manually visit each opening is especially important in the event of an emergency and saves valuable time. Plus, sending staff to manually lock a door puts them in harm’s way. Now they have peace of mind knowing that everything is controlled and monitored in real-time through a centralized platform.”
Kevin Wren, director of risk, security and emergency management for Rock Hill School District, agrees. “The Von Duprin RU allows our schools to lockdown the entire perimeter in seconds versus minutes. It happens with the push of a button instead of someone running from door to door to manually undog the opening. The more we are able to eliminate human error, the better we will be.”
Other Features Improve Efficiency, Reduce Costs
Overall, the administrators were pleased with the perimeter security solution. Boan was especially satisfied when he learned the full range of capabilities, beyond locking the device remotely. The scheduling feature allows him to set up a schedule, walk away from the system and have it secure a facility the way he intended. Another feature that excites Boan and Wren is the fact the solution can retrofit to work with their current hardware, eliminating the need to purchase new devices for every opening.
“With this, we can use our existing exit devices, which will save costs compared to replacing our devices,” says Wren.
Some security solutions require the entire hardware to be replaced. The Von Duprin RU works with existing Von Duprin 98/99 and 33A/35A series devices. This will dramatically reduce future costs as the district intends to extend this solution to its other campuses.
“We rent our facilities quite a bit,” Boan says. “We’ll have 1,000 to 2,000 people inside our buildings to see a recital, and we have lots of doors. Instead of dogging doors, we can control them. And if there is an emergency, it’s amazing that we can control it the way we do through our access control system so that we don’t leave a door accidentally unlocked. This device is a game-changer.”
Wren adds, “We’ve now eliminated the risk of a door being left unlocked overnight. Traditionally, following an event, someone had to manually secure all of the openings. If they forgot to lock a door, it would be left unsecured all night long. Now we can easily monitor all of the openings to ensure they are locked.”
Click here to view photos from Rock Hill School District.
Melany Whalin is the marketing manager of influencers and end users at Allegion.
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