Access Barriers – Lexicon Europe

Why access barriers to your work premises are a must

Access barriers are vital to any office. There is almost no other way to ensure people can easily enter and exit your premises whilst at the same time keeping everybody safe. Access barriers offer fantastic benefits to businesses, across different levels. Perhaps looking at these will help you understand why access barriers to your work premises are a must.

Security

Access barriers are all about security. They are designed to let only one person at a time through the gates. This can be done through tokens, optical eyes, infrared beams, card scanners or even manually. What matters is that only those people who have the right level of access are able to come in. These gates also prevent tailgating, meaning that people can’t sneakily run through after someone else, which is a particular problem with doors.

Furthermore, a good gate will monitor exactly how many people are coming in and coming out. This means that should there be a fire drill or any other reason as to why you should leave the building, you can immediately see how many people should be together at the emergency assembly point.

Speed

Access barriers are much quicker than doors as well. With doors, people generally first have to operate a mechanism to get access, after which they can actually open the door. Fire doors in particular are very heavy to open and often take ages to shut. Plus, doors leave themselves open to tailgating. With an access barrier, however, people can simply walk through. You do, however, have to make sure you have an average of how many people go in and out of your building at peak times, so that you can avoid the build-up of traffic, essentially leading to human traffic jams.

There are a few things to think about before you invest in access barriers. The first thing to bear in mind is that you leave your premises accessible for those in a wheelchair. Hence, you have to have either a different gate or door for those people, or you need to invest in wider access barriers.

Next, you must consider what type of barrier you want. There are various types available, from the full length turnstile gates that you will see in prisons, to suave, hip-height glass and stainless steel models regularly used in high end offices and banks. Once you have researched the various options, you should be able to choose the one that is right for you.