The Rumyantsevo Business Park is one of the largest office and shopping complexes in Moscow. Over 40,000 employees work at this multi-tenant complex in the capital of Russia. It offers more than 800 offices, shops, bars, restaurants and hotels, including the metro station Rumyantsevo. For those who travel by car, there is a parking facility for 8,000 cars.

Initially, traditional low-frequency proximity card readers were installed at the turnstiles of the access points and at the entrance to the parking lot. However, as it turned out during the operation of the system, this solution proved to be suboptimal. After extensive evaluation, the Russian company AAM Systems was chosen as the systems integrator to implement a new security and access control system for Rumyantsevo Business Park.

To ensure only authorized people get access to the business park, AAM Systems installed Nedap’s MACE. MACE is a mobile access platform that enables both reading mobile credentials presented by a smartphone as well as traditional physical access proximity and smart cards. The MACE virtual credentials are stored on the mobile device and issued, revoked and reused via the MACE Admin Portal.

Employees of the business park were issued the specially designed Troika cards. These travel cards, based on NXP’s Mifare DESfire smartcard technology, contain a memory area reserved for the purpose of access control, which was approved by the Department of Transport of Moscow. This allows the employees of Rumyantsevo Business Park to use one single card to travel to work by public transportation and to enter their offices.

Besides physical access cards, gaining access with the use of smartphones is the second preferred option. The virtual mobile ID card is stored on smartphones of employees via the MACE App, using either NFC or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology.

“Of course, it was important for us to ensure a high level of security,” explained Vladimir Yurkov, technical director of security service for Rumyantsevo Business Park. “But no less important was the convenience for people who work at the business park or visit it. If there is the slightest discomfort when accessing the building, this will cause a delay. With a small number of users this may not be critical. But imagine a system that is used for 40,000 people, most of whom enter and exit the building at the same time. At the parking and building entrances, serious congestion would inevitably arise, which would adversely affect our reputation.”

Automatic vehicle identification solutions installed at Rumyantsevo Business Park ensures only authorized vehicles can get access. Employees can choose to use their smartphone for access to the parking facility or to use long-range RFID. Nedap’s uPASS Reach, long-range RFID based on UHF (Ultra High Frequency) technology, allows consistent reading of a windshield mounted UHF tag up to 5 meters. Both MACE and uPASS solutions prevent traffic congestion at the entrances of the parking facilities of the business park during peak times.

“It was important for us to ensure a high level of security and comfort,” Yurkov said. “We were looking for a reliable, time-tested solution that could include advanced technologies that provide maximum user-experience and increase the status of Rumyantsevo Business Park. AAM Systems and Nedap Identification Systems understood our access control ambitions.”