Background
The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, named after one of Teesside's most famous sons, is a major tertiary care centre providing leading edge acute hospital services.
Part of South Tees Hospital NHS Trust, it opened as South Cleveland Hospital in 1980 and, in the last few years it has gone through a four-year PFI development to double in size to 145,000 sq m and house all of the Trust's specialties on the one Middlesborough site.
The hospital now serves around 300,000 people and has 1,010 beds; it is the district general hospital for people living in the local authority areas of Middlesborough, Redcar and Cleveland. It is also a specialist hospital for a much wider area - including North Yorkshire, Durham and Cumbria - providing services for people with heart disease, cancer, kidney disease and injuries and diseases of the brain and spinal cord, as well as some specialist children's services.
Making the choice
Following the completion of the newly enlarged site, the decision was made to ensure the security of the hospital by installing a state-of-the-art access control system. The security system ensures that only specified people can gain access to secure areas at a given time. Locally based Bayley Security was appointed to specify and install the system.
"The size and complexity of the installation made our choice simple," says the company's Director John Bayley. "We specified a Bewator Granta system, which could easily handle the scale of the project - over 200 access points - but also integrate other elements of their security system, such as door alarms and a baby tagging system for the maternity unit."
Granta is a modular access control system, which can be expanded to control of over 2,000 access points. Managed via a PC-based software system, Bewator Granta is also future-proof, meaning it can easily be upgraded to protect the end user's investment.
Installation
As well as the main building, five other outbuildings have been incorporated into a single access control system; the project to install, test and commission some 200 access points has taken just over a year for Bayley Security - a task complicated by the need to integrate the work with the day to day running of a busy hospital. To facilitate ease of movement for hospital staff to and from secure areas, the security installer specified Bewator proximity readers to work with the Granta system.
In order to reduce the cost of the installation, the five outbuildings were connected through an existing LAN fibre optic communications network.
"As well as access points on the wards and other key areas, we have also incorporated the fire doors and emergency exits into the system," says John Bayley, "enabling security to view on a separate graphic if a door has been opened or left open. Every access point also has its own time frame for use and, of course, every individual card user has their access rights defined on their photo ID access card."
To date, the hospital has issued over 7,000 cards to hospital staff, with more constantly being added. These are issued through a PC-based administration system which has Windows-based software. This administration system is one of the key benefits of the Granta system; although simple to use it provides a wealth of data to hospital security, and allows precise control of who can have access to what areas and at what times.
Conclusion
"We had faith that the Granta system would have the capacity and sophistication to deal with the requirements of what is a very large and complex installation," says John Bayley. "We have used Granta on a number of occasions before, including large petrochemical plants and public sector buildings.
"The system is easy to administrate, which is critical if the security is to be effective, and it can be expanded or modified really easily as and when needed.
"It is already working well at the hospital and providing the high level of discreet security that modern hospitals now demand."
