Keeping Britain’s water clean and pure

Scottish Water in the UK needed a unified and effective barrier against extreme weather and persistent acts of vandalism. Abloy solutions are used by water companies worldwide to safeguard sites from unauthorized access and more importantly, to protect the public.

Numerous sites

Scottish Water, the UK’s fourth largest water and waste-water service provider, is a publicly-owned company answering to the Scottish Parliament. They provide services to 2.2 million private and 130,000 business customers across the UK.

Abloy padlocks were specified at the service provider’s sites shortly after the formation of Scottish Water. In January 2001, the project to upgrade and standardize security across the entire company was initiated.

Extreme conditions

Safeguarding a water utility involves protecting the property and facilities against attempted security breaches and vandalism, often in remote locations which are exposed to extreme weather conditions.

Scottish Water required standardized locks across multiple sites that also could be opened by several individuals with varying access rights. These systems needed to be integrated across different lock types, such as cylinders, padlocks and industrial locks so that authorized personnel could access specific areas without requiring multiple sets of keys.

Water tight solutions

Scottish Water decided to standardize all of its sites on the Abloy master keying system to control access for front line staff, each of whom have different levels of responsibility and security clearance.

The solution included the Abloy PL340 padlock which is constructed to withstand extreme environmental conditions and provide maximum resistance against attack. It also included the Abloy Protec two-way cylinder mechanism whose patented features make it practically pickproof.

Products

• Padlocks – Abloy Security
• Protec cylinder mechanism – Abloy Security