Digital Locking Technology for School Campus Unterföhring

The new Unterföhring school campus, consisting of various different buildings, stands out not only because of its size but also through its technical equipment. This includes the digital lock system from SimonsVoss Technologies whose head office is close to the school campus.

“Such a project is somewhat special because of its scale,” said SimonsVoss CEO Bernhard Sommer. “We were very pleased to complete this as a representative reference installation very close to us, directly here in Unterföhring.” The project was developed on the 50,000 m² site on the Mitterfeldallee by the Munich Architects Felix+Jonas, while project management was carried out by Hitzler Ingenieure (Munich).

Barrier-free access architecture of the buildings

A special characteristic of the site that stretches over some 350 meters is the school boulevard, which is the connecting element between:

• the High School
• the Elementary School with lunchtime supervision
• the daycare center
• the dining hall
• the sports building with its generously sized open spaces

Hitzler Ingenieure described the layout concept in this way: “The barrier-free access architecture of the buildings fulfills the pedagogical requirements for flexibly useable rooms and learning areas with high environmental quality. The generously sized and variable room structures in all the school buildings enable the formation of traditional classrooms, but also of study areas for self-determined learning. The variety of usage options and the very modern equipment provide the flexibility to adapt to contemporary needs and the many methods of learning as well as to support modern teaching strategies.”

Various and huge size of site: mechanical locking systems were not an option

Flexibility is the keyword for the planning and implementation of access control on the Unterföhring school campus that caters for some 1,500 pupils and their corresponding teaching and administration staff. Lothar Kapfenberger, head of the local planning office, says: “Mechanical locking systems were not an option for an object of this size with its various different buildings and user groups. We want to provide a high level of security, flexibility and reliability here, and that is only possible with digital locking technology. We can adapt this system at any time to our current requirements.”

Virtual Access Network: Access Rights Automatically Updated

The SimonsVoss 3060 system has been implemented on the school campus as a virtual network, which enables central management of the locking system. In addition, the external doors and special access points of the buildings have been fitted with SmartRelais 3 readers (SREL 3). A total of 130 of these units were installed, mainly on the external doors, and combined with motorized locks or other electric door retention equipment.

The SREL 3s are connected to the network and serve as gateways to update the access rights. Updated data is passed via Ethernet from the LSM software used by the system administrators to the gateways and from there to the identification tokens. This means the access rights of each user are automatically updated when they enter. The advantages of this solution are in the simplified infrastructure because only the central gateways are networked, with a correspondingly small administration load. Flexibility is provided in this constellation not only in changes to the users and usage, but also to future options. For example, it is possible to bring specific and especially important doors online into the network, and the fine tuning of the locking plan can be done at any time even without a network by using the programming unit.

Because there is a relatively high number of users who had to be equipped with a simple and economic ID medium on the school campus, the local authority decided to use a passive solution with smart cards instead of active transponders. Around 400 Mifare Desfire lock cards were issued to teachers and administration staff. The data transfer takes place automatically as soon as the smart card comes within 1 cm of a reader.

Doorhandles with Internal Readers on Both Sides

The doors of the classrooms and technical rooms on the school campus are fitted with a total of 600 digital SmartHandle AX SC door handles in vertical orientation with an integrated reader (‘SC’ stands for operation by smart card). The integrated battery in the handle is sufficient for up to 200,000 operations. The technological heart of the SmartHandle AX is its secure element that stores access events (up to 3,000) and encrypts any security-relevant data.
There is also flexibility in installation: the modular construction allows the SmartHandle AX to be adapted to the particular door thickness, distance and shape of all the relevant doors on the school campus. Some of the doors were fitted with the SmartHandle version that reads cards on both sides. The two handles, inside and outside, are not connected but operate independently. The advantage of this is that different authorization can be set up for each side of the door. The black-grey/silver lock casing provides an attractive visual accent to the internal doors.

SimonsVoss have provided digital dual-handle cylinders from the 3060 system with an anti-panic function for the technical rooms. These cylinders freely rotate on both sides so that the door can be locked and unlocked from inside and outside with an authorized ID token (smart cards on the school campus). In a panic situation, the door can also be opened without any ID. In total, around 200 cylinders of this type were installed in various buildings.

Advantage: Many Users – Little Administration

The digital locking system has been in full operation since all the school buildings were put into use in 2021. The advantages quickly became obvious in practice — if a smart card is lost, for example, the access rights can be deleted immediately by the administrators, also for security-relevant doors, and re-programmed. User changes and different usage of rooms are everyday occur-rences on the school campus — not least for the sports hall. The access rights that have been issued can be easily and quickly adapted to the changing usage. And with the SimonsVoss company just down the road in Unterföhring, the administrators truly have a direct line to the manufacturers.