27 Jul The Fastlane to Fitness – Mingara One Fitness Centre Upgrades Security with Triarm Turnstile

Mingara One is Central Coasts’ premium fitness centre with over 4000 members, a state of the art gymnasium, a comprehensive Wellness Centre and 3 swim pool areas including an 8 lane Olympic pool.

Mingara had been using the Entrance Control solution for membership, CRM, Swim School and POS for over 10 years but when they opened the new Mingara One fitness Centre they realised that membership would more than double and they needed to implement an effective access control system to enable valid members to quickly and easily gain access to the centre whilst ensuring non members can’t gain access thereby protecting their revenue stream.

Mingara consulted with Entrance Control Systems as to the best solution to automate members’ entry and exit and provide an effective entrance control system. The final solution consisted of 2 Fastlane Tripod Turnstiles for entry. These where supplied with swipe card readers and integrated with the Entrance Control membership system. When a member swipes their card at the turnstile the Entrance Control software verifies that the membership is valid and the person has arrived during their correct time slot. For exit there is a motorised pedestrian gate that has been integrated with a set of PE beams so that it opens automatically as someone exits. The gate has also been integrated with a desk mounted control to open the gate thereby enabling disabled access in to and out of the centre whilst also facilitating deliveries.

The system went live in October 2008 and now manages 1200 entries per day with a peak of over 420 entries in a busy hour. One of the key benefits of the automated process is that is has freed up the reception team, so instead of the time consuming process of verifying whether someone is a valid member and there at the right time, they can now focus on bookings, new members and general day to day queries which enables them to provide a more responsive service and members are gaining access to the site faster than before.

‘One of our key reasons for choosing Entrance Control was that we wanted to single source our software management solution and our entrance control solution’ says Nicole Murphy Pacholek, the Operations Manager for Mingara One, ‘This way we have a single point of contact, with a 24/7 telephone support line, if there are any problems with any part of the system. No other turnstile provider could match this level of support.’.