A new student housing project at Texas A&M has deployed a comprehensive access control system from SALTO that includes wireless locks and the company’s data-on-card technology.

Park West Student Living at Texas A&M University is the country’s largest ever single-phase student housing project, featuring 15 buildings across 47 acres. The access control system chosen for the student residence complex includes SALTO electronic locks, readers and controllers managed by SALTO ProAccess SPACE software. Park West has its own dedicated SALTO server, and all controllers are connected to the same local switch network, but are on their own dedicated security virtual land-area network (VLAN).

“The developer knew that for a project the size of Park West, they would never, ever want to go back to doors for programming,” says Norman Roe, CEO of Synergy Fiber, the system integrator on the project. “They had experienced pain points in the past with access control integrations that required multiple credentials, constant maintenance and difficulty for the local staff to manage the systems.”

Nearly 1,100 doors throughout the housing complex have been outfitted with SALTO’s XS4 offline escutcheons and 79 online locks. SALTO locks are also being used to secure the property’s datacenter, which hosts its own cloud for the client and server cabinets.  The complex’s storage units also secured by SALTO locks, providing an audit trail for entries to the units.

The project is also leveraging SALTO’s Virtual Network (SVN) data-on-card technology, which allows standalone locks to read, write and receive encrypted and secure information via RFID read/write technology. In SVN, all access data is stored on and distributed by its operating smart card or device.

When a credential is presented to an offline standalone door, the virtual network controls access rights to the door, and through two-way communication, the door also writes data, like blacklist information or battery status, back to the smart card. The smart card can then transmit this info back to the server via online wall readers that update and receive information from the smart cards anytime and anywhere in the facility.

Synergy Fiber will be responsible for managing the ongoing door and server maintenance at the complex, while the leasing office will manage day-to-day credential issuance for the 3,500 student residents, employees, and other approved users.