Case study

Providing Multi-terminal Security for Dublin Airport Authority

For almost two decades, acre has helped the Dublin Airport Authority create smooth and secure passenger experiences. Here’s how.

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Solution - visitor management

Solution

Visitor management

Delivery method - hybrid

Delivery method

Hybrid

Industry - aviation

Industry

Aviation

About the client

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) owns and operates Ireland’s two largest airports: Dublin and Cork. Founded in 1937, the DAA serves over 28 million passengers every year and provides flight services to a wide range of destinations across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific.

The DAA aims to deliver quality airport travel experiences. It operates to the highest international standards, with an emphasis on providing a secure environment for employees and passengers.

The challenge

Since 2006, the DAA has relied on acre to provide fully customized, future-proof enterprise security solutions to comply with the aviation industry’s stringent requirements.

With over 3,600 employees and 28 million passengers passing through its terminals every year, the DAA needed an intelligent and robust visitor management solution that could:

  • Provide safe and secure experiences for millions of passengers
  • Monitor employee and passenger activity easily
  • Quickly verify boarding passes
  • Manage immigration controls from one location
  • Facilitate US pre-clearance
  • Perform government ID scanning
  • Integrate seamlessly with existing software and security policies

“[Acre] are highly competent in their line of business, willing to change and adapt to meet all our business needs. They have a good team in each of their security disciplines - hardware, software, and implementation.”
– Vincent McGrath, Security Operations Manager, Dublin Airport

The solution

We began the project by installing a comprehensive back office and in-depth reporting suite. This enables the DAA security team to create custom reports using a blend of business data, historical reports, and analytics. Additionally, we worked with the DAA to integrate our enterprise security suite with its third-party bus service and fire systems into a single, intuitive platform.

As the project progressed, we worked with the DAA to install access points that allow security teams across both airports to perform air transport pre-clearance checks for US-bound passengers. We also installed a three-tier access control fail-safe to cater to additional requirements. Only 15 locations globally have the facilities to perform air transport pre-clearance checks. And the DAA operates two of these.

In the almost two decades since the DAA chose us as its primary security provider and advisor, we’ve installed:

  • 1,500 multimodal cards and biometric readers
  • 30,000 secure card credentials
  • Anti-pass gates
  • Failover IT architecture

The result

The DAA’s enterprise security suite has enhanced security across two of Ireland’s busiest airports while maintaining the high-quality passenger experiences it’s known for. As a fully integrated system, it simplifies regulatory compliance and enables the security team to monitor staff and passenger activity from one location.

Crucially, our solution offers enhanced visitor clearance capabilities. This makes Dublin and Cork two of only 15 airports to offer comprehensive pre-clearance for US passengers.

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