New RFID cleaning and security tracking system reduces public liability risk in four major Sydney shopping centres and a prestige high rise office tower...
Shopping centre manager’s nightmare: A three year old child drops an ice cream cone on the floor... and when it is nicely melted, a 93 year old granny slips on it and breaks a hip.
Nobody’s happy except the litigation lawyers!
You can’t ban ice cream cones from the centre – your tenants sell them. Nor can you follow every three year old around with a mop and bucket. But what you can do is set such stringent risk avoidance and maintenance KPIs that the insurance company accepts the risk at an affordable premium.
To achieve this, you not only have to set a rigid timetable of frequent inspections and cleaning tours of garbage areas, pedestrian traffic areas and bathrooms, you also have to police it to the extent that you can stand up in court and provide proof that the area in question was inspected and maintained on schedule.
Not surprisingly, electronic surveillance and reporting have long been used to keep tabs on return point maintenance tours – but the most sophisticated systems to date use a pen or wand that must be touched to a reporting point by the touring employee to register, introducing a human error factor.
This is the premise behind a new RFID-based return point tracking solution that is designed to eliminate human error. The new kwiklook Tours solution was jointly developed by leading RFID developer Protrac ID and property management system specialist FutureIT, and can either be installed as a stand alone product, or incorporated as an extension to the well-established FutureIT kwiklook facilities operations management suite.
keep it simple. Make it foolproof.
An automated docking system for kwikloook data collectors (wands/probes) makes it all work painlessly. Designed by Protrac iD, each mobile-phone-size receiver simply slots into its socket at the end of the shift, and the data is automatically downloaded while the unit is recharged for the next shift.
The kwiklook Tours solution is both simple and effective. Long range, active RFID radio transmitters are installed in the ceilings above garbage bins and restrooms and at regular intervals throughout the pedestrian areas.
Cleaning staff, security staff and supervisors wear a radio receiver the size of a mobile phone clipped to their belts or pockets, and each time they pass a transmitter it records the location, date and the time. At the end of the shift, all the employee has to do is drop the receiver into a slot in the docking unit and the recorded data is automatically uploaded and the unit recharged.
The system can be installed in a matter of hours, staff training is simple, and the fixed transmitters themselves do not require mains power (batteries have an operating life of 5 years, transmitting 24 x 7), so not to require messy, time consuming installation and connection to mains power. Best of all, it is a passive system, so the data is recorded automatically and operator failure is eliminated. All the employee has to do is do their job!
now successfully installed and operating in five major NSW shopping centres.
The first kwiklook Tours return point tracking system, was installed at Carlingford Court, a large GPT owned property in Sydney’s North West with 29,500 square meters of retail space. The system is now installed in four more properties in the Sydney Region – Rouse Hill Town Centre, Westpont Blacktown, Ashfield and French's Forest.
kwiklook Tours has an advantage over conventional return point tracking systems because it is a hands-free, automated system and therefore offers greater reporting certainty. "It is both effective and competitively priced”, says Brian Smith of FMS, “and there has been a high level of acceptance from our staff”
delivering tighter property management systems in a Sydney landmark office tower.
kwiklook Patrol will be installed at Citigroup Centre, 2 Park St, Sydney, situated between George and Pitt Streets. The building is jointly owned by GPT, Jones Lang LaSalle and Macquarie Office Trust.
kwiklook Tours was primarily developed as a solution for retail centres, where public liability insurance is a significant part of the overhead, but it is also finding favour in other areas of commercial property management.
Citigroup Centre at 2 Park Street is a landmark Sydney office tower comprising 41 levels of office space, totaling 72,631 square metres, with 256 car parking spaces and a a four-level retail podium connecting to Town Hall Station and the Darling Harbour Monorail. The new kwiklook Tours RFID system is installed here to ensure the efficiency of security and cleaning functions in the retail podium, underground parking areas and shared tenant areas.
Sep 23, 2009