Note: This is the second part of Ray’s July/August column of the same name.
Q: Is there a standard or common convention for naming doors in an access control system?
A: There is no single standard, or even a set of standards, given the wide variety of building and room types. Guideline documents published online can serve as a starting point for developing what you need.
The approaches for numbering and labeling building areas, rooms and doors are numerous and vary from very simple to very complex. Primary considerations stem from the use of area and door labels and identifiers.
Guideline Documents
When it comes to the naming conventions themselves, there are no authoritative standards for the naming of building areas, rooms and doors. However, there are helpful approaches for various types of facilities. Guidance documents are available online, and it can be helpful to find door naming convention documents for building types and facilities similar to your own. The most helpful guideline documents are those that include the rationale behind the naming approaches.
Many guidelines conflict. For example, here are three recommendations for labeling a two-door entryway.
1. Use a single number for a two-door entryway. (Very common)
2. Number each door separately in a two-door entryway. (Less Common)
3. Use a single door number with a letter appended, such as doors 217-A and 217-B. (Fulfills the purpose of the two rules above it.)
The rationale behind the third recommendation above is: When a door hinge needs service or repair, the simple number-and-letter label facilitates door identification in a two-door situation and eliminates the potential for misidentification. Often long door descriptions don’t fit easily in a simple door list, and they make the door list harder to read and scan low-down visual searches.
Over the years I have found that universities and cities often post their door naming guidelines online, some for purposes of student, staff and visitor wayfinding, some for use in building construction and modeling, some to facilitate fire alarm responders and some for naming doors in an access control system. Vendors of door products can provide helpful guidance also. Thus, a dozen or so documents usually be found that can serve as good starting references.
Here are four examples out of the 25 that I found online recently:
- UNSW Building Management - Appendix-8-Room-Numbering-Standards.pdf (https://www.estate.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Appendix-8-Room-Numbering-Standards.pdf)
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa: UHM Floor and Room Numbering Guidelines 2018-11-01.pdf (https://manoa.hawaii.edu/planning/UHM%20Floor%20and%20Room%20Numbering%20Guidelines%202018-11-01.pdf
- FireEngineering.com: Improving Facility Orientation (https://www.fireengineering.com/fire-prevention-protection/improving-facility-orientation/)
- Stanford University - Lenel Naming Standards 110512.pdf (https://uit.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2012/11/07/LenelNamingStandards110512.pdf)
Modern Access Control Systems
Today’s access control systems are more advanced in their data structures than they used to be. Originally, door names were nothing more than labels for card readers and were used only by local on-site personnel. Then, physical access control was managed on a site-by-site basis with standalone access control systems at each facility.
Now, multi-site organizations manage access centrally, using an enterprise-class access control system. These typically have a hierarchical data structure that starts with REGIONS or AREAS, then LOCATIONS or SITES, and then BUILDINGS. From there doors are accessed through a multi-level list. That provides the capability for the system to take a local alarm and add the geographical contexts to it when building alarm messages. That’s important because so many door and area names are common across buildings, such as "Front Lobby."
Locally, people don't need geographical area and site name labels because they know where they are. In a SOC, or central alarm monitoring display, and for central and regional access management, it's a different story.
When an enterprise organization has disparate brands of security systems, part of the overall task is working out how to propagate the Single Source of Truth (SSOT) data into the access control and alarm systems so that they produce alarm data that is fully actionable for SOC, Command Center and Remote Central Station personnel. Sometimes that requires generating a “more complete" master labeling scheme, from which specific portions of the master label are omitted for certain stakeholders, like for local lock and key management.
Yes, it can be a lot of tedious work. If we had been paying more attention all along to the data aspects of our security systems, we would have maintained the integrity of common data used for many purposes across multiple systems. Now that BIM (Building Information Management) systems are in use starting at the building design stage, and now that corporate enterprise data governance and data stewardship functions are common, we can and should get it right now and keep it that way in the future.
About the author: Ray Bernard, PSP CHS-III, is the principal consultant for Ray Bernard Consulting Services (RBCS), a firm that provides security consulting services for public and private facilities (www.go-rbcs.com). In 2018 IFSEC Global listed Ray as #12 in the world’s Top 30 Security Thought Leaders. He is the author of the Elsevier book Security Technology Convergence Insights available on Amazon. Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayBernardRBCS.
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