HID Mobile Access Maximises Security in Warsaw Skyscraper

Skyliner, located in the vibrant Wola business district, is one of the tallest buildings in the Polish capital at 195 metres. The skyscraper of the Karimpol Group offers a total of 49,000 square metres of lettable space on 42 floors.

For access control, the developer segmented the building into different zones according to use: Office space for tenants, freely accessible areas for the public and an underground car park. Compliance with security protocols is guaranteed by a control system that, among other things, ensures that visitors to the building do not enter the office floors directly from the underground car park, but are first routed through the lobby.

"Another important goal relates to the introduction of contactless access, where people pass through the turnstiles at reception and a lift is automatically called to take them to the right floor," explains Szymon Zduńczyk, head of the Karimpol Group's technical department. "We wanted to make everything as easy as possible for the people who work in and visit the building."

To realise its goals and provide added value to tenants, the Karimpol Group installed a feature-rich workplace platform developed by Hellopark - the SkylinerAPP. Through the application, tenants and employees reserve parking spaces, book desks and conference rooms, and receive information about the building or events planned in it. At the same time, users send maintenance requests to the building's facility managers via the app.

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As an important component of the SkylinerAPP for Android and iOS smartphones, the HID Mobile Access solution regulates physical access to the building. The HID solution is based on the contactless authorisation technology Seos. Procurement and installation were handled by GMP Power, which also installed 300 readers for integration with the mobile access solution.

Simplified Set-Up and Integration

"To make authorisation work at the door level, we integrated HID's software development kit into our mobile app as well as the HID Origo portal, which is connected to our management panel," explains Maciej Kizlich, managing director of Hellopark. "Origo enables us to manage access permissions based on existing permits, allowing us to allocate virtual badges to tenants. It is also integrated with the security management system, so once the user is registered there, he only needs to confirm his identity by clicking on a registration email after downloading the SkylinerAPP. After that, he gets access right away."

At the beginning of the project, the Karimpol Group planned an access control solution with physical cards and an app: "We wanted to operate a dual system," explains Zduńczyk. "But as it turned out, 95 percent of the tenants already use the mobile system. The physical cards are only issued to visitors. The SkylinerAPP is a success."

Integrated Mobile Access Vontrol Increases App Use at the Workplace

The integration of mobile access control into the SkylinerAPP has added significant value and boosted usage of the app. To date, 1,600 users are registered in the SkylinerAPP. Traffic is high; users make tens of thousands of requests through the app. "The amount of interactions shows that we have done a good job," adds Kizlich. "It's not just another building management app that hardly anyone uses. It really helps people get the most out of the building and be more productive in their daily work."

Tenants are also positive about the app. "In our previous building we only used plastic cards" recalls Karolina Cieślak, manager of the regional Bolt office, one of the tenants in Skyliner. "But employees often lost or forgot them. That took a lot of time, because we had to make sure that a person was really a staff member and then issue a new card. The appeal of the SkylinerAPP in conjunction with HID's Mobile Access solution is convenience, because almost no one leaves home without a mobile phone anymore. I can activate and deactivate virtual badges. Since physical plastic cards are no longer used, it helps us to be more environmentally friendly."

The Karimpol Group is already preparing for the second phase of the Skyliner master plan. "We are collecting feedback from tenants for a lessons-learned process," explains Zduńczyk. "But we expect to implement a solution from HID and Hellopark again on the next project."