The Challenge

With a wide range of high and low-rise blocks across the city, Leeds City Council had a number of different communal door fob access systems operating, some of which were obsolete, most were standalone which meant a visit to the block to add or delete fobs. For many of the systems, the Housing Managers had to contact the contractors each time they wanted a new fob added or deleted, resulting in huge time wastage and arguably, increased costs.

Leeds City Council took the decision in 2013 that they needed to update the systems across the city, moving to systems that are more efficient to use and require less input from outsourced contractors.

The Requirement

The main drivers behind changing the communal door access systems was to future proof the management of the blocks across the city. Whilst cost would always be a factor, Leeds City Council wanted the new system to be able to:

• Manage their communal doors fob access with greater autonomy
• Not be reliant on contractors to administer the system
• Easy access to fob activity reporting
• Access at any time from any of the housing management team offices
• Enable the LCC team to manage the system efficiently and quickly communal doors access

The Solution

CAME KMS SimpleKey Web, a cloud based communal door fob access solution was piloted in 2013 at several blocks in Leeds and following the successful pilot, it is now being rolled out across the city.

The Results

The programme began with some blocks undertaking system upgrades and progressed to new developments. From the outset of the update programme, CAME KMS provided Leeds City Council with support and training for all staff to ensure the new system could be self-managed by Leeds City Council housing staff. With staff now able to access the system from anywhere that has access to the internet, managers were able to administer and manage the fob administration with little or no input from contractors. Simplekey Web also means that the technical teams within Leeds City Council are able to monitor performance in real time.

Russell Brown, Electrical Services Manager at Leeds City Council: “The KMS system has made us far more efficient in managing the communal access across all our blocks and has enabled us to become self-sufficient. The support from KMS has been incredible, they are always easy to get hold of and if there have been issues have responded and solved them quickly”.