Mobile Access Control with a Pocket PC

A staggering task

As a senior systems analyst for a major construction company, I am often involved with mega-projects such as gas and oil plants and pipelines, large resort complexes, bridges, and highways. During one such project, which totaled a few hundred million dollars, we were called upon to solve a major access control problem that arose on the construction site of a large hotel/resort complex in Egypt.

Access control can become a very taxing experience when it involves the entry or exit of approximately eight thousand construction workers through four gates inside of fifteen minutes. Add to it that on a weekly basis the gates to be controlled move along the perimeter of the construction area based on construction activity and logistics. Each person coming in had to be identified, checked against a list of personae non gratae, and his or her time of entry recorded for payroll purposes. Workers exiting the area at end of working hours also had to be processed for time of exit. The same entry/exit routine was also done during the lunch break and any other time a worker/staff member needed to enter or exit the control area. And, if that were not enough, the turnover of workers was very high--between 50 and 100 workers were fired, released, or hired on a daily basis.

In trying to carry out all those tasks manually, a lot of problems arose. Bad handwriting on the forms where in/out data was recorded were the least of concerns. Workers who were previously fired would try to sneak in with malicious intent, and there was no realistic way of catching them. Time of entry and exit for each worker was not recorded properly, which meant that workers often got overpaid for time not actually spent on the construction site. It took too long to process all the workers rushing in at the same time, which led to a lot of workers being marked as late when actually they had been standing in line waiting for their turn.

Mobile access control

Management of the project decided that something had to be done to automate the process and make it more efficient; hence, I was called upon to research a system with which we could apply proper access control, keep track of who entered and exited and when, and make sure to notify security of anyone not allowed to enter. All that had to be done with a totally mobile system that could easily travel with the gates when they moved.

After researching the different possibilities, we decided to use handheld computers and develop an in-house software application for the handhelds to automate the process. The handheld of choice was the Symbol PPT-2800 Pocket PC- based handheld computer with built-in barcode scanner (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Symbol PPT-2800 Pocket PC

To identify workers properly, new badges were designed and distributed. The badge carried the worker's picture, along with his ID number (barcoded and big enough to be scanned from around two feet), his department, and his position. When a new employee was hired, a badge was printed and given to the person immediately; his data got synchronized immediately with the lookup database for the handhelds.

Each gate was made into a multi-lane crossing for entry and exit. In total there were thirty-two lanes distributed over the four gates. Each lane was manned by a gateman. Each gateman was equipped with a Symbol PPT-2800 running the software we built for this project. The software allows the user to select an activity: "Log In" workers or "Log Out" workers (Fig.2). Once the activity has been selected, the handheld is ready to start processing workers. Workers standing in line at the gate would proceed one by one. The gate man would scan the barcode on the badge of the worker next in line waiting to enter.

Fig. 2. Gateman may choose to log in workers entering or log out workers exiting the facility.

The scanned barcode was first compared to a database of all current employees and then to a "blacklist" of personae non gratae. If the barcode was found in the database of current employees, data about the person was displayed onscreen (Fig. 3); if the barcode was also found in the blacklist then an alert was displayed onscreen (Fig. 4) notifying the gateman to contact security and management.

Fig. 3. Employee record is displayed after barcode is identified.

Fig. 4. Security alert when scanned badge number is found on a blacklist.

In case the barcode was not found in either of the two lists, an alert was displayed (Fig. 5) to inform the gateman that the badge number was invalid. This could mean one of two things: either the badge was a forgery, which is the case in the great majority of the instances of when this happens, or this was a new employee whose data hadn't gone through all the synchronization process properly--very unlikely. The process continued until all workers had been processed.

Fig. 5. Notification indicates badge not identified as either a current or blacklisted employee.

At end of day, the handhelds are taken back to the main office where they are synchronized with the database on the server. All databases are refreshed, and data collected for the day is downloaded to the server. The data collected consists of the worker's badge number, and all the times that worker entered and exited the construction area. For example, if a worker arrived in the morning and didn't leave until end of working hours, then that worker would have two entries in the database for that day. One entry would carry a date/time stamp to indicate the time he or she entered; the other entry would be for the time of exit. A worker who came in in the morning, left for lunch, came back, then left at the end of the day would have four entries, one corresponding to each transaction (entry or exit).

ROI

Once operational, the system was very rewarding. On the data side, reports on daily attendance were produced very quickly. Payroll data on hours spent onsite was available immediately with no data entry steps involved in acquiring this data from paper forms. Security improved as all attempts at gaining entry into the construction site by previous employees via forged or old unreturned ID cards was totally under control. Moreover, time spent processing workers coming in or leaving the construction area during rush hours was greatly reduced.

Adaptability to other types of environments

Such a system can be implemented in a multitude of other environments aside from the construction industry. One such environment may be conferences and exhibits. Customarily, attendees at conferences and exhibits are given badges which carry their name, title, and company. If those badges carry a barcode of the ID of the attendee, then security officers and ushers manning gates of exhibits and seminar rooms can make use of Pocket PCs (either Wi-Fi-enabled or offline) to control access to the event rooms, and to get statistics automatically of all attendance at the different seminars offered. Also, exhibitors can collect data on the fly about visitors to their booth. If Pocket PCs are used for this task, no permanent installations or bulky systems need to be put in place to offer this functionality both to security personnel and ushers at gates and to exhibitors at their booths.