HelseBergenAn Overview of Upgrading the Access Control and Security for one of Scandinavia’s largest University Hospitals, Helse Bergen—Haukeland University Hospital has more than 8,000 employees, and almost the same number of students belonging to the hospital. There are more than 120 different departments in the organization, and most of them are situated in the same area within the central buildings. The remainder of facilities are hospitals, and are spread out among the country.

The History
Helse Bergen installed their first access control system in 1991, and after 4 years they had almost 100 card readers installed in the main building. The system they chose at the time did not meet their expectation, and in 1998 they decided to make a new specification with a bid competition for a modern IT based access control system, with an expectation to last for a long period of time. One of the highlights in the specification was that the system had to be modular / upgradeable and backward compatible. They did not want to have to change the whole system in order to take advantage of new hardware and software upgrades every time they became available.

The Solution
They decided to use controllers and card readers from PCSC and presentation software known as XSM (later EBI) from Honeywell. Installation and service was provided by PCSC’s Norwegian distributor Infratek Security Solutions. The contract was signed late in 1998, and the installation started in 1999. The panels used at that time were PCSC’s Ultimate controller with a direct ethernet connection using TCP/IP protocol, all panels were connected directly to the hospitals IT network so that remote sites would be as easy to secure as the central buildings.

Years later, additional IQ-series panels were installated, and today there are more than 500 card readers connected to the Ultimates and IQ controllers that are linked to full redundant EBI-servers through the Hospitals IT-network, and the system is still “growing”. In late 2008 it is planned to install another 200 card readers in different buildings. In the near future the the complex will have had at least 1000 card readers installed.

The Director of Security Mr. Arvid Eik and the Hospitals Security Department are very satisfied having made the correct decision 9 years ago, discovering they had more maintenance with the old 100-reader system than what they have today with a 500+ reader system from PCSC.

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