Johnston County, North Carolina

• 8 Buildings
• 98 Secured Doors

Site Description

Johnston County, North Carolina (www.johnstonnc.com), is located midway between New York and Florida on I-95 and I-40. Founded in 1746, the county is home to (among other things) a museum devoted to the famed movie star and county native Ava Gardner. The county has a total of 11 buildings. With one exception, these are located within the city limits of Smithfield, the county seat. The remaining building is about 10 miles away.

The Situation

Johnston County installed its first Keri equipment in 1999, in what was then a combined courthouse/law enforcement building. This system provided access to judges’ chambers and other high-security interior doors. In 2002 another stand-alone Keri system was installed, at the county’s land use center. At that point, the county realized that (a) it wanted to expand its Keri installation, and (b) networking technology would make it easy to create a single site comprising all of its buildings. That way, Daniel Clifton, facilities assistant superintendent, and his staff would not be required to manage a separate site for every building equipped with Keri access control equipment. Plus, as employees traveled among buildings, their movements would be more easily trackable on Doors software.

The Keri Solution

Says Mr. Clifton, “Right after the second stand-alone installation, we connected five other offices, storage buildings, and garages using a LAN, securing a total of 98 doors.” In 2005 the county connected seven doors in its newest building to the LAN, renting fiber optic line from the local cable provider to make the connection. Physical space was an issue in the new building, so the county used Keri’s Eight-Door Concentrator Cabinet to minimize physical space requirements.

The county uses a combination of PXL-250 and PXL-500 controllers across the eight-building networked installation. “We were especially pleased that we didn’t have to replace the PXL-250 controllers when we upgraded,” Mr. Clifton notes.

Results

The two stand-alone sites are not scheduled to be upgraded anytime soon, notes Mr. Clifton, But they are connected to the network, which makes the county’s entire Keri access control system easily manageable from a single Doors database.

Many doors in the Johnston County installation are currently secured with both Keri proximity readers and numeric keypads. However, says Mr. Clifton, “we’re getting away from keypads. If keypads go bad we don’t replace them. We can’t track them as well, because one person gives another person the number. And numbers can be stolen.”

How would Daniel Clifton sum up his experience with Keri Systems? “The Keri networking technology has reduced our cabling costs and hassles, and has allowed multiple remote sites to be managed as a single unified site. And of course using the Eight-Door Concentrator has saved space.”

Equipment Used

• 10 PXL-500 Controllers
• 8 SB-593 Satellite Expansion Boards
• 1 Eight-Door Concentrator Cabinet
• 85 MS-5000 Proximity Readers
• 40 PXL-250 Controllers
• 39 SB-293 Satellite Expansion Boards
• 14 MS-3000 Proximity Readers
• 1250 KC-10X Proximity Cards
• Doors Software