Johnson Controls has announced that the Dr. P. Phillips YMCA has installed Software House’s C-CURE 9000 security and event management platform as part of a comprehensive visitor management system designed to increase security by verifying member identity and restricting access of non-members.

Dr. P. Phillips’ YMCA, located in Doctor Phillips, Fla., is the largest of 27 facilities that are part of The YMCA of Central Florida. This single location serves 11,000 active members. The facility recently completed an $11 million renovation and expansion project, which also included an upgrade to the physical access control system to incorporate biometric technology to improve the member check-in process.

The comprehensive system integrates Software House C-CURE 9000 with biometric readers from iDentytech and swing glass optical turnstiles from Automatic Systems. Together, the systems manage the flow of visitors into the facility by enabling members to gain access using a biometric fingerprint reader instead of swiping an access control card.

The turnstiles help to manage the flow of visitors and identify when a person does not have membership privileges to gain access. Membership enrollment information resides in C-CURE 9000, which serves as the central component of the overall access control system. Johnson Controls’ integration arm served as the systems integrator on the project.

“With the old system,” said Dan Humbert, director of IT for the YMCA of Central Florida, “the only way to tell which family center membership someone held was by the color of the barcode. With the C-CURE 9000 system that’s all automated. We can now capture the information on where they can work out directly in the system.”

A major benefit of the new access control system and membership program is that it provides more accurate accounting of membership status. The system can flag out-of-date memberships, so when a person is denied access that person can be directed to the desk where they can pay on-site and be reinstated.