Safety first at school: how AGSO Antwerp manages 172 locations safely and flexibly with Synguard

The challenge: combining safety and accessibility

 “Synguard thinks along with us to find the best solutions that improve safety and ease of use across all locations.”

AGSO Antwerp manages nursery, primary and secondary schools, academies and adult education centres. Together, they serve almost 55,000 pupils and students.

This scale creates major operational complexity. Every day, teachers, school leaders, maintenance teams, cleaning staff, students, visitors and external organisations move through the different buildings. A teacher, an evening school student, a cleaner, a technician or an association renting a room in the evening: each profile needs different rights and access.

Many schools still used physical keys for a long time. This was not only inconvenient, but also difficult to monitor.

As Kevin Polfliet, Security Management Advisor at AGSO, explains:

“In most schools, we used keys. But that mainly has disadvantages. If you work at two different locations, you need two keys. For maintenance staff, it is impossible to carry a key for every school.

Keys were also constantly being lost, so we had to make many copies. That became very expensive. Checking whether a temporary employee still had a key was also very difficult. Everything was tracked manually.”

AGSO therefore needed a software and hardware solution that was secure enough for a complex education environment, while still being simple to use every day by school leaders, administrative staff, maintenance teams and teachers.

How it works in practice

The strength of the solution lies in the combination of central overview and local management. Each school keeps the autonomy it needs, while AGSO also has one central, scalable environment.

School leaders and administrative staff can manage access themselves through the Synguard cloud. This makes the system powerful and useful in daily practice.

An employee, student or external user quickly receives the right access rights, linked to their role, location and time window. A teacher who teaches at several schools or a maintenance worker can use the same badge at every location. Associations that rent a room after school hours receive targeted access to the right rooms. Visitors can enter smoothly and securely using a QR code.

The added value: fewer keys, more control

“We gained more control, greater ease of use and safer operations at school level, across all locations.”

For AGSO Antwerp, the move to Synguard clearly simplified daily management. The main benefits are:

• Less dependence on physical keys
  Making, distributing and tracking keys is no longer the standard. Access is managed digitally and can be adjusted quickly.
• More safety and control
  AGSO decides who has access, where and when. Rights are linked to location, time and user profile.
• Ease of use for employees
  Teachers, maintenance staff and external users can access multiple locations with one badge, as long as they are authorised to do so.
• Simple management by local staff
  After a short training session, school leaders and administrative staff can manage access rights themselves.
• Flexible visitor management
  Visitors and external organisations receive access through QR codes and only to the zones for which they have permission.
• More efficient parking use
  Car parks are managed through number plate recognition and badges, so employees, visitors and local residents can access them in a controlled way.
• Scalable for new schools and campuses
  New locations can be added to the same cloud environment.

Ready for the future

“Synguard regularly informs us about new features that can add value to our access management. This is how they keep their ‘Always with you’ promise.”

The cooperation between AGSO Antwerp and Synguard continues to develop. Synguard will equip new schools and campuses with access management. An additional data link with the student database is also planned, so adult education students can receive access at irregular times, such as in the evening or at the weekend.

Synguard actively thinks along about new possibilities. Not every school has the same needs. What works for a primary school is not necessarily the best solution for a secondary school or an adult education centre. That is why a flexible, scalable and configurable system is essential.

Do you also want to make access control, parking management and visitor registration simpler, safer and more scalable? Discover what Synguard can do for your organisation: sales@synguard.be