Project Spotlight: City of Columbia Access Control

By Brian Nutt, Mid Mo Territory Manager for Kenton Brothers, talking about an access control project for the City of Columbia

A long term relationship leads to a long term project.

Stacy Wessing and Brian Nutt from our Mid Mo team have worked with the City of Columbia for over 10 years on numerous projects, some of which included battery backup systems for their data centers, virtualization software, networking equipment, and downtown surveillance cameras. Brian and Stacy have also worked at a previous employer together with some of the City’s current staff. The City knew we could deliver on a project as promised from previous successful experiences and a solid relationship.

In 2017, the City of Columbia issued an RFP for replacing their existing access control system. The existing system had reached end of life and was falling short in the City’s expectations of functionality, manageability and convergence. The RFP was very detailed on expectations of a new system and Kenton Brothers partner, S2 Security, fit this requirement perfectly. The RFP involved several buildings that must communicate with a centralized controller and provide individual site administration.

Upon award of the RFP to KB, several meetings were held to discuss a strategic deployment that would have little to no impact on the City’s day to day functions. The deployment then started with first installing the new controller and setting up schedules and user profiles. The City put together a team to refresh their existing data base and provide a current profile for KB to implement. KB’s own Neal Bellamy was deeply involved with each step of the initial programming of the new controller. The design and build of the controller was a phenomenal success, very few changes were needed and those were rapidly handled by KB’s support team.

Then the deployment began of each City property involved. Each site has new nodes, some of them with multiple nodes, that all must communicate back to the main controller. New card readers were installed at every location to enhance the City’s physical security credential. KB moved right along, as pre-staging and pre-programming of the new equipment was completed by KB and the City for each site, a few days before installation.

As each site was turned up, users experienced very few changes to their typical means of access, which was the intention all along. To install a new system at each site and have very little impact to the City’s day to day business for their citizens and employees. A weekly conference call was scheduled by KB to review the prior week’s install and, to provide a fully engaged project management team with a means for communication of status updates to the City. The City staff is great at letting KB know any perceived potential caveats so that a plan could be implemented in a timely fashion.

In just a couple months on-site, KB is nearing completion of the entire project, which is 3 months ahead of schedule. It takes a great collaboration with the customer, a very detailed plan of execution, and a great team concept. KB’s involvement with the customer at each and every step of this entire project has made it a great success. Special thanks go out to each and every City employee involved and the great installation team at KB. David Potter and Paul Rudkin did a great installation job on every site and, they have made this project a great success for the City and KB.