Aperio Upgrade Heightens Security at Ahoy Rotterdam

With about 1.8 million visitors per year, Ahoy Rotterdam, the leading event complex in the Netherlands, was in need of a secure and flexible locking system with maximum manageability. Thanks to Aperio, a subsidiary of ASSA ABLOY, Ahoy now has state-of-the-art protection.

The multipurpose Ahoy venue, which employees 250 staff, plays host to hundreds of events each year. It contains six exhibition halls covering an area of 30,000 square meters, seven congress and conference centers, an arena and various restaurants. Security at the venue, however, had been compromised due to the misplacement of keys for the arena’s existing mechanical locking system.

The challenge of improving security at Ahoy meant ensuring the new solution could be adapted to the venue’s existing Nedap AEOS access control system. The answer was to upgrade the existing mechanical locks on about 150 doors in the complex with Aperio wireless access control technology.

“The intelligent Aperio technology was chosen to create a wireless connection with the existing access control system, without requiring any modification to the existing doors,” Harro van Est, manager of facility services at Ahoy Rotterdam, said.

Not having to make modifications to the doors and the fact that the new system works seamlessly with existing card readers also kept the customer’s installation costs to a minimum. The Aperio upgrade now means it is possible to see who the last person was in a particular room and to manage access rights for each door.