Guarding the Games
Biometrics already lending a hand for 2012 London Olympics
- By Jon Mooney
- Mar 18, 2008
Construction sites are fiercely
regulated environments in
the United Kingdom, under
a program called the
Construction Skills Certification Scheme.
At these sites, CSCS accreditation is tied to
employee biometric details. At many construction
sites, only workers with a CSCS
card can be employed. The Olympic venues
in London fall into this group.
“Munich changed everything,” said
Larry Buendorf, chief security officer for
the United States Olympic Committee for
the past 14 years and, previously, a 21-year
veteran with the Secret Service. “As each
security incident occurs in this world, it
changes how you go about your regular,
day-to-day business. You use these security
incidents as a learning tool.”
Evolving Standards
The use of biometrics has grown with each
successive Olympic Games. After protecting
athletes at the 1984 Los Angeles
games, hand geometry readers have been a
feature of access control at subsequent
Olympic Games. In previous Olympics,
athletes and others with official credentials
were given identification badges with bar
codes. Badge-swapping was common—
while the authenticity of the badge could
be verified, there was no way to tell if the
person wearing it was the one to whom it
was issued.
Biometrics Keep Tabs
On Workers at Asian
Construction Site
Solution Expert Technology of Hong Kong
implemented a biometric-based system
using 90 hand readers to control access to
all six entrances at a construction site that
has become the Venetian Macao, the anchor
of a Las Vegas-style strip in Asia.
“Protecting projects from theft and keeping
people from getting hurt on construction
sites are always a top concern,” said Tony
Yuen, COO of Solution Expert Technology. “In
Macao, strict labor and safety laws that prevent
illegal workers and workers without
safety training from entering construction
sites make strict access control even more
urgent. General contractors who violate
these laws receive heavy penalties when
they are caught.”
According to Yuen, contractors are
increasingly turning to biometric hand geometry
technology to help them quickly give
access to authorized workers and accurately
deny entry to people who should not be
on-site. With hand readers, a worker’s permit
and safety training records, along with expiration
dates, can be entered into a database
that not only verifies an employee’s identity,
but instantly checks to see if that employee is
authorized to be there.
At the Venetian Macao, the site was so big
that there were concerns that cables would
be consistently cut. So data was sent wirelessly,
using an 802.11 wireless router.
Solution Expert Technology has written
time and attendance software for both
Chinese and English users that interfaces
seamlessly with the hand readers. Similar
systems are used at more than 100 construction
sites operated by several of the largest
construction companies in Hong Kong.
At the Venetian Macao site, turnstiles
were posted at each entrance. Officials created
a dual system with hand reader terminals
on both sides, allowing the same turnstile
to be used by workers either entering or
exiting a site. A contactless smart card, typically
kept in a hip pocket, called up a stored
biometric template, which then was immediately
validated by the employee’s hand on the
hand reader terminal.
Timekeeping information for the employee
instantly was transmitted to a central office
wirelessly. Everyone entering the site, from
employees to outside subcontractors and
vendors, was required to use the hand readers
for access.
The hand readers themselves were protected
by weatherproof stainless steel housings
equipped with red and green indicator
lights. One set of battery-powered turnstiles
could serve up to 300 workers who entered
and exited the site up to six times a day. That
meant one set of turnstiles could handle 1,800
transactions per day while still quickly and
efficiently providing both timekeeping and
access control functions.
“The portability of our solutions is a key
selling point,” Yuen said. “Site entrances are
temporary and often moved every three to
four weeks. Our turnstile solutions are made
to be easily towed from entrance to entrance
and site-to-site.
“With the hand reader turnstiles, the construction
company can now directly pay all
workers, whether they have been hired by
subcontractors or not, eliminating potential
contract disputes and giving construction
companies greater control over their budgets.
They also have daily access to accurate
reports about overall payroll costs. The hand
reader terminals also ensure that every person
entering a construction site holds a valid
safety card and has completed an eight-hour
mandatory safety training class.” |
By the time the 1996 Atlanta games
ended, hand geometry tracked 65,000 people,
providing more than 1 million transactions
in 28 days. It also secured the athletes’
dormitories at Georgia Tech. That
Olympics was the first wide-scale deployment
of ID cards linked to hand geometry
readers through radio frequencies. Each
card contained a chip that stored an ID
number and a digital template of the person’s
hand to whom the badge was issued.
As a person approached high-security
access points, such as those into the
Olympic Village, the RF chip transmitted
the image and number. A computer recorded
the number so the person’s entry and
exit could be tracked.
Meanwhile, the person placed a hand on
a hand geometry reader that compared a 3-
D geometric image of the hand with the
image sent by the ID card. If the two didn’t
match, access was denied. The process
took only a few seconds.
Since then, however, terrorists have
become more sophisticated. For instance,
in 2004, a bomb that exploded during a
parade killed the president of Chechnya.
The device had been planted well in
advance of the event.
Knowing that terrorists can plan ahead,
the biometrics used in Atlanta already are
being used in London—at construction
sites creating the 2012 London games venues.
However, in the United Kingdom,
most of these Olympic construction sites
would probably be protected in the same
way—even if they weren’t being planned
for the games. In other words, security has
commenced more than five years before
the games themselves actually begin, but
in a de facto way. That’s because these are
not the only construction sites in the
United Kingdom using hand geometry.
An Outdated System
Many might not be aware that the construction
industry within the United
Kingdom is the country’s single largest
employer, with more than 2.2 million
employees. While the industry is rapidly
growing, it continues to suffer from poor
access control at construction sites, litigation
costs of health and safety violations,
buddy-punching and overcharging by contractors.
At any given time, major construction companies have multiple construction
sites with a large number of
stakeholders involved in construction and
development work.
To maintain adequate security, access to
the sites historically has been granted using
a card-based system. Security officers
would verify the credentials of employees
against their cards and make manual
entries into the register. Gaining access to
the construction site was a laborious
process, and unsupervised access using
smart cards allowed workers to clock in
and out for each other.
The large number of stakeholders made
it difficult for project managers to control
access to sites, know who was on-site and
determine if they had the necessary credentials
to be there. As a consequence, there
was the potential of site security being
compromised, unnecessary overheads due
to litigation costs on health and safety violations,
buddy-punching and incorrect payments
to contractors.
The industry turned to Human
Recognition Systems, a privately held UK
company based in Liverpool that specializes
in developing and delivering solutions
that identify people and their behaviors.
Established in 2002, HRS is recognized by
industry experts as a leading biometric,
identity management consulting and system
integration company. The firm’s biometric
information management system
incorporates biometrics with management
software platforms, allowing managers in
the construction industry to perform a variety
of functions specifically designed to
address key industry concerns regarding
health and safety details, CSCS accreditation,
site access and report generation.
Minimizing Ghost Working
“ The adoption of biometric technology by
construction firms delivers many key benefits
by positively proving the identity of
individuals on site, and it eliminates the
potential for ghost working, a longstanding
issue within the industry,” said Lee Hannis,
business development manager at HRS.
Ghost working is the practice of registering
multiple identities on a site.
Employees often ghost work by using their
friends and colleagues to use a swipe or
proximity card, which does not necessarily
guarantee the presence of an individual onsite—
only that their card has turned up for
work. By using a biometric reader to control
access and egress from a site, a construction
company can maintain control of
its cost base and only pay people who actually
turn up.
“We are delighted to see this kind of
real value being delivered to the businesses
we work with,” Hannis said. “Our
approach to all biometric projects is to
identify the business requirements and only
integrate biometrics if true value can be
derived from the system.”
Of course, ghost workers could just as
well be people with bad intentions. Today,
access to many construction sites, including
those that will be Olympic venues, is
granted by verifying the credentials of
employees against their biometric hand
geometry templates. Upon hiring, the
worker is enrolled in the system by placing
a hand onto the platen of the hand reader
and being provided with a PIN. Then, to
enter the work site, the worker simply
enters the PIN on the keyboard of the hand
geometry unit and then places a hand on
the reader’s plate. If the hand matches the
template from the system, the worker is
allowed to enter. Each transaction is
recorded by the system and provides project
managers with accurate information on
the number of workers on-site, duration of
stay and other information.
“This is a really exciting development
for us, and rarely before have we seen such
a compelling fit of biometric technology to
a specific industry problem. With such outstanding
benefits, we certainly expect to
see many more implementations of this
type in the future,” said Simon Appleton,
security solutions manager.
An Early Adopter
One of the United Kingdom’s largest construction
companies, Carillion, was among
the first to use the new system, recognizing
an increasing need to maintain and
improve health and safety standards on
building sites. With 17,000 employees,
Carillion provides a broad range of business,
transport and construction services to
commercial and public sector clients in the
United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Canada
and the Middle East.
Their previous systems using swipe
card technology were flawed, only reporting
a card’s presence on-site, not that of an
actual person. Further problems also were
encountered with poor reliability of equipment
in wet and dusty conditions. The
technology must often withstand harsh outdoor
conditions and changeable biometrics
due to scarring, burns or dirt. These obstacles
have been overcome with outdoor biometric
readers, an application in which
hand geometry readers excel. And now, at
the touch of a button, Carillion site managers
and other contractors using the system
can print a list of exactly who is present
at an emergency or site evacuation.
“The selection of the biometric is crucial
in these conditions,” Hannis said. “It is
our job to make sure that 2,000-plus construction
workers trying to get home after a
long day can leave the site without unnecessary
delay.”
From use as a security tool at the
Olympics to a method of monitoring construction
worker access in the United
Kingdom, biometric hand reader technology
clearly is a wave of the future for the
security industry.