Electronic gatehouse

A typical gatehouse has three or four books on the desk: entries, visitors, keys and the duty log. Each is kept by someone different and each ends with its own shift. When the manager asks who was in the production hall after ten at night and whether the morning’s visitor has left, the answer has to be pieced together from several books, and even then nobody knows whether someone left without signing out.

Registering a vehicle at the gate

The operator registers an entry in TraxSystem on a single screen and can do it without touching the mouse. Vehicle, driver and carrier details are suggested from the history, so a regular transport can be entered in a dozen or so seconds. The entry type decides which fields and document scans are required, and photos from the gate cameras are attached to the visit on entry and exit.

Vehicles that are allowed in can be handled by number plate recognition without the operator. Visit states, time on site and gate permissions are described on the vehicle entry control page.

Visitors: a card from the pool instead of a line in a book

Reception issues each visitor a card from the visitor card pool, and once returned the card goes back into circulation. At every passage TraxSystem checks separately whether the visitor is expected and who invited them, and adds them to the list of people on site. Presence closes automatically once the maximum visit time is exceeded, so the list does not fill up with visitors who left without swiping out.

A visitor coming to a meeting booked in the system may not need a card at all. They get a PIN that is valid only during the booking and only at that room, and if the gate has a plate-reading camera, they drive in on their own number plate. This is described on the room booking page.

Staff without a card, contractors and keys

An employee who has left their card at home gets a temporary card from a separate pool at reception. For a set time, twelve hours by default, it opens the same passages as their own cards and records working time in the same way, while their permanent cards are blocked. They unblock automatically when the employee returns the temporary card.

Contractor crews come in on work lists. The pass office assigns each person a card from the temporary worker pool, reception hands it over in person, and only from that moment does the card open passages. Reception has its own screen for this, showing the card and visit status of every person, with a surname search across all lists at once. The whole process is described on the contractor staff page.

The same access control module also keeps the key register.

Drivers check themselves in at the kiosk

A kiosk by the gate lets drivers report their arrival without involving security. The driver picks one of eighteen languages, enters the booking number and vehicle details, confirms their phone number with an SMS code and scans the transport documents. If they have no valid health and safety induction, they complete it on the spot, with a test and a signature on the screen. Clearance to enter arrives by SMS, so they can wait outside the gate, and security does not have to copy details from documents.

The barrier is opened by the operator or by number plate recognition; the kiosk’s part ends when the driver has clearance to enter and a pass.

Who is on site right now

The TraxSystem on-site list covers employees, visitors, subcontractors and drivers waiting at the docks, and next to it is a list of vehicles on site with the purpose of each visit and the time since entry. During an alarm, the same list is used to account for people at the assembly point, as described on the health and safety and evacuation page.

Duty log, site bans and security permissions

Security entries from every shift go into the electronic duty log, together with official notes and incident records with photos. This is part of the site security module.

Site bans and warnings about drivers are checked at registration and at the gate. The system shows them to the operator, and a person decides whether to stop anyone.

In TraxSystem, registering an entry, opening the barrier and access to all gates are three separate permissions. The gatehouse can therefore be run by an outside security company, with its staff given exactly the scope they need at their own gate.

What makes up the electronic gatehouse

The vehicle entry log is part of the TraxSystem base package. Visitors, cards and the key register belong to the access control module, the duty log to the site security module, and the kiosk and the induction to the delivery booking and health and safety induction modules. The pricing configurator shows the price for the set you choose.

What the electronic gatehouse does not do

The electronic gatehouse does not recognise faces and does not use biometrics as a basis for access. Nor does it read text from documents: it stores the scan and the details entered by the driver or the operator.

It does not replace CCTV. From the cameras it saves photos of the vehicle on entry and exit, plus photos and short clips of passages through points fitted with a camera, while continuous recording stays with your CCTV system.

Without controllers and readers, no passage opens by itself. What remains is a register kept by hand, with the same reports and the same on-site list. People who came in without registering will not appear on the on-site list in any set-up.

Questions about the electronic gatehouse

Related

Vehicle entry controlAccess control for peopleContractor staffSite securitySite under physical security

Further reading: Registering an entry without a mouse · How many people are on site? · What is a security duty log? · Driver data at the gatehouse: retention and GDPR

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