On Friday, November 4th, a new company will take over the gatehouse personnel. Securitas, a leading international protective services company, will take over for Weiser Security, who has staffed the gatehouse for the past ten years. This will mean all new guards, and we ask you to bear with us as they get to know you, and vice versa. I have provided Securitas with what we are looking for, and they will use that as a guideline to staff accordingly. While we are excited to begin this new relationship, we do realize there is an end to the old one. One guard in particular, may stay with Weiser, but would prefer to stay here in Spring Run. Ralph has been with us a long time, and he is very fond of the membership. I know many will be sorry to see him go as well.
In addition to the new provider, a new Visitor Management System called dwellingLive will be installed by mid-November. This will upgrade and enhance our current method of managing guests and contractors. You will be able to manage them online yourself for the first time, and you will find the interface clean, simple, and easy to navigate. More to come on dwellingLive, but suffice to say it will be a major improvement to our tracking efforts, and a major enhancement for you and your guests!
As you probably have experienced, our laser bar code reader is on the fritz, as they say. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. It needs a new encoder at a cost of $3,000. That said, we have decided that it is time to change technologies. The laser is a “line of sight” technology that may have problems if it is too rainy, or too sunny, or if the bar code on the window is at an angle, etc, whereas a Transponder is an RFID (radio frequency) technology. And it actually costs LESS than the encoder for the bar code reader! We anticipate getting the Transponder installed by mid-November, and then beginning the process of switching over to the small, clear transponder tags that will go on the windshield. We feel that this will vastly improve the service and satisfaction (read: reduce your stress levels) with access to the community. There are a number of cool things to mention regarding what this system and dwellingLive can do, but we’ll get into that a little bit later.
In mid December or January, a new call box will be delivered and installed. It is an updated technology that is designed to work directly with dwellingLive, and will feature a tiny camera on its face…for your face. The camera will be connected to a guard who can see you, using the exact real-time database in dwellingLive that we will all be using. It reduces mistakes by the guard and aggrevations for the guest, and will vastly improve the ability for us to confirm a guest’s credentials. We hope to have the Virtual Monitoring in place by mid-January at the latest.
Finally, we are getting a new laser scanner for foyer by the office door entrance for your membership cards afterhours. We hope to have it installed on Monday. It has been a nightmare trying to get the replacement part, and we appreciate your patience. And lastly, we will have some new LED gate arms installed next week. I’m just letting you know, but I guarantee you that you wouldn’t miss them at night!
Looking forward to a great season!
Sincerely,
Mike
Springing Forward 
Please try to keep Ralph. He is always helpful, cheerful & polite.
This is good news, as I have been concerned with the lack of security in the past. I have friends who just drive by the guard and wave, they are let in at that point.
Thank you for this.
Mike, I am delighted that we are moving forward with new advanced security at the gate. Our current system relies solely on the guards to remember that we have called to let a guest in. This has over the years resulted in many errors. I commend you and the Board for making this new improvement.
If we have to wait a month or more (we’ve been without gate access with two cars since Oct. 8) to get a new scanner at the gate and new stickers, and will have a new staff, delays at the get will be ridiculous as they stop everyone, so a temporary system of a red card or something to show so they will open the gate quickly as the current staff does. It’s still a ;pain to wait for the gate to open every time, but at least the current staff just does it. There is no security in this, of course. They just trust that those of us who are waiting at the gate belong in.
It would be great if Ralph could be part of the new security system. If not, a collection for Ralph from the Spring Run residents would be a nice and appropriate thing to do. Thanks N Murphy