Appian Technology PLC

Boots Case Study

The Problem:

The Boots Company are using Talon ANPR to control vehicle access at its Nottingham headquarters. It is one of 100 buildings situated at the massive 340 acre site in Beeston, Nottingham - a site so vast that it has its own bus service. More than 8,000 employees are based at Boots in Nottingham. Following a major review of security and fire safety services at the site, Appian's ANPR system was chosen for installation.

Typically 10,000 vehicles including HGVs from Boot's distributions fleet enter and exit the site each day. From the database of 10,000 vehicles, approximately 8,000 are staff cars and the rest are contractor vehicles or trucks from Boots' HGV fleet.

Previously, some vehicles, especially taxis, used the site as a "rat-run" in order to cut 4 miles off their journey across Nottingham, but Talon has now resolved this problem for Boots.

The Solution:

Talon ANPR was introduced to provide the Site Protection Team with the tools to control and monitor the traffic entering the site without impeding the daily business of site users.

The Boots System comprises of ANPR on a total of 11 lanes at the 3 entrances/exits to the site. The Main Entrance (Thane Road) has two staff entry lanes, two staff exit lanes and a single visitor entry lane. The Beeston access is similar except there is no visitor lane. The Harriman's Road access has single entry and exit lanes and is designated for lorries and trucks only.

The Talon system introduced to Boots operates by a vehicle passing through the gates and stopping at a road marking next to a red traffic light. A pole mounted CCTV camera captures the number plate and sends the image via a land line (GSM links can also be used) to the Plate Recognition Unit (PRU) situated in the control. The PRU then automatically checks the number plate against its database.

If the number plate of the vehicle awaiting access matches that of a vehicle stored on the database, the Talon ANPR system sends a signal to the traffic light which then changes it from red to green. This in turn triggers the barrier, which raises to let the driver enter the site. A safety loop on the ground recognises when the car has passed through the barrier and brings the barrier down - this prevents other cars sneaking in behind authorised vehicles. The process is used for both entry and exit to the site.

The whole process takes less than 5 seconds

"It is the rate we need with the volume of traffic that we have, especially during the busy rush hour periods" (Site Protection, Boots).

The Benefits:

• Savings in manpower cost ("...the capital investment may be recouped quickly through the savings in manpower costs alone", Site Protection, Boots)
• Talon records when and where vehicles have entered the site, which enables Boots management to check whether contractors have turned up on time to deliver or collect goods
• Talon can be programmed to limit contractors' access to certain hours on certain days and automatically cancel the authorisation for a vehicle to have unimpeded access to the site
• Talon's inventory facility includes a list of all vehicles currently on site, the time at which they arrived and on which lane and the Talon's history facility provides a list of all vehicle movements on and off site over the last 60 days. This is valuable information for Boots should a particular incident occur on the site where it would be useful for Boots to know the vehicles on site at a given date and time.