What you should hold when a Hartmann system is handed over

Hartmann Controls builds access control software and controller hardware: the Odyssey and PROTECTOR.Net management platforms, PoE door controllers designed to cut the amount of cable pulled back to a closet, and PRS controllers for traditional-cabling retrofit, elevator and input/output work. Smaller deployments can run on Hartmann’s HC Atom appliance instead of a full server. Those are the choices. What follows is what should exist on paper and in your own hands when the job is finished, because that is what decides whether the system is still serviceable in five years.

The documents

• Door schedule. One line per opening: lock, reader, request-to-exit, door contact, power source, fire alarm interface and egress behavior.
• Panel map. Which controller, which port, which door. This is the single item most often missing on systems that get inherited, and rebuilding it means opening enclosures and tracing cable.
• Software record. Platform, version, whether it runs on a server, a virtual machine or an HC Atom appliance, and where the database actually lives.
• Backup with a tested restore. A backup nobody has restored is an assumption. It also belongs somewhere other than the machine it protects.
• Reader wiring standard. Whether openings are Wiegand or OSDP, and at what run lengths, so the next reader replacement is a parts order instead of an investigation.
• Test record and spares list. What was tested and on what date, plus the battery, reader, lock and power supply models the building should stock.

The accounts

Administrator accounts belong to the organization occupying the building, not to whoever installed the system. That includes the top-level account, the ability to add and remove administrators, and access to the database backup. Georgia commercial property turns over often enough for this to matter in practice: buildings in metro Atlanta and around the port change owners and management companies regularly, and a system nobody can administer eventually becomes a system that gets ripped out and replaced at full cost.

Deployment choices worth making deliberately

PoE controllers mount at or above the door and reduce the cable pulled back to a closet, which is attractive in finished space and in tenant fit-outs where core drilling is restricted by the landlord. PRS controllers, in an enclosure with conventional cabling, fit retrofits, elevator control and monitored input and output points. Odyssey and PROTECTOR.Net differ in administration model and scale rather than in whether they can open a door, so choose on how the building will be administered day to day and by how many people, then confirm the exact software and controller firmware combination against current Hartmann documentation.

Where the equipment lives in a Georgia building

Enclosure placement is an environmental decision here. Mezzanines above a warehouse floor, loading dock walls and parking deck levels are hot, humid and dirty, and equipment placed there needs an enclosure rating and a mounting position chosen for that reality rather than for the closet shown on a drawing. Summer thunderstorms make surge protection a design item on the power feed and on any copper leaving the building toward a gate, guard booth or second structure, with grounding and bonding done at rough-in. Standby battery capacity is sized for the real hold-up requirement and then derated for heat, because a battery in a hot mezzanine will not deliver its rated runtime.

After handover

Systems need expansion, reader and lock replacement, software upgrades to supported releases, and periodic review of who still holds access. Whoever performs that work should be able to start from the documents above rather than from a fresh survey, and that is the practical test of whether a handover was done properly.

Related scope: access control systems and security system service and repair. KSEDCO’s Georgia office is at 2700 Cumberland Pkwy SE, Suite 410, Atlanta GA 30339, (888) 360-0035.