The Los Angeles World Airports, which oversees airport operations for the city of Los Angeles, has awarded a contract modification to Unisys to upgrade its access control and alarm monitoring system that is used to identify the 45,000 airport employees, contractors, police and others who work at the organization’s three airports.

Under the modification, potentially worth an estimated $10.3 million over one year, Unisys will provide services such as site assessments, engineering, installation and training on the system’s new features. Unisys will also upgrade the airport authority’s network infrastructure.

With the new modification, Unisys will replace the airports’ existing magnetic stripe card readers with a contactless smart card system that will make it more difficult for non-authorized individuals to access secure areas. The contactless system can also save money by reducing the wear on cards and readers associated with magnetic stripe systems. The readers will be installed at 870 access points in the airports.

The airport has chosen to not use the PIV-I specification for the access control system, says a Unisys spokesperson.

The work is an early stage in the organization’s plan to move to a biometrics-based identification system where workers at the airports will be identified based on personal attributes such as fingerprints.

Los Angeles World Airports awarded a contract to Unisys to operate and maintain the access control and alarm monitoring system in 2009.