Public buildings in the education sector usually have a high footfall, so easy access is a must. Universities, colleges, schools and nurseries often have automatic doors for safety reasons, as they can help reduce any potential issues compared with heavy manual doors.
All educational establishments are busy locations due to the number of staff and students using the buildings. They always aim to achieve an inclusive environment, but heavy doors can present challenges for disabled people who need access.
Manual doors can also slow down movement at busy periods, causing bottlenecks as people queue to enter or leave. This can create a safety hazard. Consequently, automatic doors for the education sector can provide an ideal solution.
They are also useful for anyone who might struggle to open a heavy manual door such as children, people with pushchairs and delivery drivers, for example.
Benefits of automatic doors for education
Installing automatic doors for a university, college or school will help it to comply with the Equality Act 2010, which replaced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Inclusion is important to ensure everyone can easily enter and exit all educational premises.
It is a legal responsibility that public buildings are accessible for people who use wheelchairs and any other students or staff who have mobility issues. However, automatic doors do far more than provide easy access for people with disabilities.
At busy times during the day, they allow large volumes of students to move freely as they go to their next class or take a lunch break.
Automatic doors offer greater safety than non-automated doors. For example, a heavy manual door could close on a member of staff or student who has their hands full and can’t stop it.
Similarly, someone pushing a manual swinging door hard from one side could inadvertently hit a person coming through the other way.
In addition, automatic doors can help reduce the spread of colds and other infections. They open and close without touch, as a result of sensors. This avoids hundreds of people pushing the same door over the course of the day. Students, staff and visitors can benefit from a reduction in bacteria and germs.
What happens if there’s a fire?
Automatic doors can enhance fire protection in an education establishment if there’s a blaze. Providing a clear escape route, the sensors are part of a sophisticated operating system that won’t fail, even if there’s a loss of power in an emergency.
When corridors are a fire escape route, the automatic doors’ impulse generator is a fail-safe detector to open them after being triggered. Even if the power has gone off, the doors can be used as an escape and rescue route in any emergency, including a fire.
The Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) feature offers a trusted backup solution during short-term loss of mains electricity, so the doors will still open and close if there’s a power cut and no-one will be trapped inside.
Schools and colleges are also likely to have regular fire drills to test the efficiency of their evacuation. The automatic doors can become an integral part of testing how effective the procedure is.
What are the best automatic doors for the education sector?
There are a number of different automatic door solutions, each with their own advantages for the school or college environment.
A popular option is sliding doors, which are both aesthetically pleasing and provide easy access. We can retrofit them into an existing building.
Sliding doors require clear wall space on each side of the door to enable the panels to slide across on opening. Our expert team at Automatic Access can advise on whether sliding doors are suitable for the planned entrance at your school or college.
Another alternative is automatic swing doors, which we can also retrofit to upgrade existing doors. Non-automated swing doors can be heavy to open and extremely difficult for people in wheelchairs to navigate. Upgrading the existing mechanism to create automatic swing doors can be integrated seamlessly into the entrance system. This can provide a relatively low-cost solution for automatic doors.
When you consider there are around 2.86 million students attending UK higher education institutions and 10.2 million pupils in schools across Britain, it’s easy to see why an easy access system to keep pedestrian traffic moving is crucial.
Combined with compliance with the Equality Act, hopefully, this explains why automatic doors are hugely important for educational buildings.