Typical project · Quebec and Ontario
One access control system for an office building with several tenants
These are typical projects, described from the kind of work we do. They do not describe a named client or a specific building.
The lobby is on keys, the garage has its own cards, and every tenant chose a different system for its suite. This is how a building is brought onto one system without taking the management of their own doors away from the tenants.
The situation: one building, several tenants and as many access systems
The client is the company that owns or manages an office building let to several tenants. The lobby doors are locked at night with keys held by tenants, cleaners and past contractors. The garage has a card system installed years ago that nobody on the staff knows how to program any more.
Each tenant has solved its own problem: one has a keypad, another a reader bought online, a third a complete system with its own cards. An employee carries one card for the garage, a key for the lobby and a second card for the suite, and the manager cannot say who is able to enter the building after hours.
What the first visit, door by door, finds
- Doors that were never meant to be controlledThe lobby doors are glass, hung on pivots, with no room for a strike. The stair doors lock from the stair side and must let people out at all times.
- An elevator controller with inputs to spareThe elevator equipment can take a floor-by-floor authorisation from an access system, the elevator company doing its own side of the connection.
- A garage system at the end of its lifeThe reader at the ramp still works, and the list of cardholders has not been cleaned up in years.
- Leases that do not all say the same thingSome leases let the tenant install what it wants inside its suite; others refer to a building standard that was never written.
What is designed, and why
The building receives one system and one written standard. The tenants keep control of their own doors and cardholders.
- One system for the common areasThe lobby, stair and service doors, the garage, the delivery door and the elevators belong to one system, with a schedule for each door: open during business hours, on card the rest of the time.
- Hardware chosen door by doorEach door gets the lock that suits it: an electromagnetic lock with its exit devices on the glass lobby doors, an electric strike or an electrified lock elsewhere. Exit without a card and the behaviour on a fire alarm are verified at every door.
- Tenants kept apartA tenant that joins the system manages its own cardholders and its own doors, and sees nothing of the others. The building manager sees the common doors only.
- Readers that accept what people carryThe readers take cards, fobs and phones. Where a tenant wants it for a sensitive room, a fingerprint or face recognition reader is installed at that door, at the tenant's request.
- Visitors and calls after hoursA video entry panel at the lobby door calls the tenant, who releases the door and authorises the elevator to its own floor. The cameras at the entrances are tied to the door events, so that a forced door has its picture.
How the work is sequenced without keeping a tenant out
The building stays open and occupied. A door changes over only when the people who use it already hold a card that works.
- The standard and the door schedule
The manager approves a schedule that lists every door, its hardware, its reader and its hours, and a short standard for the tenants who want to join the system.
- Cable and controllers
Cable is pulled to each door from the telecom rooms and the controllers are installed, while the doors keep working as before.
- Cards issued before any door changes
The list of cardholders is collected from each tenant and compared with the old garage list, then the cards are issued.
- Doors changed over one at a time
Each door is fitted, tested for entry, exit and release on fire alarm, then put into service. The lobby doors are done at a time agreed with the manager.
- Elevators last
The elevator control is commissioned with the elevator company, on one car first, the floors staying open until every tenant has confirmed its list.
What is handed over
- The door schedule as built: hardware, reader, wiring and hours of each door
- The test record of each door: entry, exit and release on fire alarm
- Administrator accounts for the manager and for each tenant, with their training
- The written standard for the tenants who join later
- The list of cardholders at handover, cleaned up and sorted by tenant
- Drawings of the cable routes, the controllers and the power supplies
Services involved
Industry
Other typical projects
- Entry panel and fobs in an occupied rental building
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- A cut fibre backbone repaired and re-certified
- Leak detection with shut-off by riser in a condo building
- An office move on a fixed date: cabling, Wi-Fi, doors and phones
- Mobile coverage for two levels of underground parking
- Analogue cameras replaced by IP cameras across a group of stores
- Licence plate recognition at the gate of a logistics yard
- Audio and video for the meeting rooms of an office
- A network put back in order after a security incident
- An old alarm system replaced in a store with offices and a stockroom
A project like this starts with a list of doors and a walk with the manager
Tell us how many entrances, floors and tenants the building has and what controls the doors today. We go to every door with the manager, then send a quote that names the hardware door by door and the order of the changeover. We reply in English or French.