Security expert Abloy UK has supplied the Design Museum in Kensington, London, with over 56 PROTEC2 CLIQ® electromechanical cylinders to secure doors within the building and form part of a security system that protects high value assets and exhibits.

The Design Museum is an innovative new exhibition centre showcasing a number of design features. The building is 10,000 square metres with over 100 staff working at any given time in the building’s three galleries, restaurant, café and events space.

The museum opened to the public in November 2016 and required a new master key system within the schedule. The Design Museum’s construction company recommended Abloy for the specification due to the company’s excellent reputation for supplying master key systems within the museums and heritage sector.

Abloy were asked to specify two options - a solely mechanical solution and PROTEC2 CLIQ®, an electro-mechanical solution. PROTEC2 CLIQ® is an easy-to-use access control system based on mechanical high security disc cylinders combined with highly encrypted electronic locking and identification.

CLIQ® was selected over the mechanical option as this gave the museum more flexibility to change access, whilst eliminating the need to change cylinders. There are a number of different contractors on site every day and the security team were having to escort visitors around the site, which was proving very time consuming.

The CLIQ® software was installed in the control room and the cylinders secured doors, allowing access only to areas personnel were authorised to enter. This gave the flexibility to change access without jeopardising security. For example, if a master key was lost on a mechanical system they would have had to replace cylinders as well as keys which would have been costly, but CLIQ® eliminated this risk.