Mobile Access Control with a Pocket PC

A staggering task

As a senior systems analyst for a major construction company, I am often involved with mega-projects such as gas and oil plants and pipelines, large resort complexes, bridges, and highways. During one such project, which totaled a few hundred million dollars, we were called upon to solve a major access control problem that arose on the construction site of a large hotel/resort complex in Egypt.

Access control can become a very taxing experience when it involves the entry or exit of approximately eight thousand construction workers through four gates inside of fifteen minutes. Add to it that on a weekly basis the gates to be controlled move along the perimeter of the construction area based on construction activity and logistics. Each person coming in had to be identified, checked against a list of personae non gratae, and his or her time of entry recorded for payroll purposes. Workers exiting the area at end of working hours also had to be processed for time of exit. The same entry/exit routine was also done during the lunch break and any other time a worker/staff member needed to enter or exit the control area. And, if that were not enough, the turnover of workers was very high--between 50 and 100 workers were fired, released, or hired on a daily basis.

In trying to carry out all those tasks manually, a lot of problems arose. Bad handwriting on the forms where in/out data was recorded were the least of concerns. Workers who were previously fired would try to sneak in with malicious intent, and there was no realistic way of catching them. Time of entry and exit for each worker was not recorded properly, which meant that workers often got overpaid for time not actually spent on the construction site. It took too long to process all the workers rushing in at the same time, which led to a lot of workers being marked as late when actually they had been standing in line waiting for their turn.

Mobile access control

Management of the project decided that something had to be done to automate the process and make it more efficient; hence, I was called upon to research a system with which we could apply proper access control, keep track of who entered and exited and when, and make sure to notify security of anyone not allowed to enter. All that had to be done with a totally mobile system that could easily travel with the gates when they moved.

After researching the different possibilities, we decided to use handheld computers and develop an in-house software application for the handhelds to automate the process. The handheld of choice was the Symbol PPT-2800 Pocket PC- based handheld computer with built-in barcode scanner (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Symbol PPT-2800 Pocket PC

To identify workers properly, new badges were designed and distributed. The badge carried the worker's picture, along with his ID number (barcoded and big enough to be scanned from around two feet), his department, and his position. When a new employee was hired, a badge was printed and given to the person immediately; his data got synchronized immediately with the lookup database for the handhelds.

Each gate was made into a multi-lane crossing for entry and exit. In total there were thirty-two lanes distributed over the four gates. Each lane was manned by a gateman. Each gateman was equipped with a Symbol PPT-2800 running the software we built for this project. The software allows the user to select an activity: "Log In" workers or "Log Out" workers (Fig.2). Once the activity has been selected, the handheld is ready to start processing workers. Workers standing in line at the gate would proceed one by one. The gate man would scan the barcode on the badge of the worker next in line waiting to enter.

Fig. 2. Gateman may choose to log in workers entering or log out workers exiting the facility.