Who gets in, and what the door does when they do

Because of what is inside them. If the fobs are 125 kHz proximity, which describes most fobs handed out in this region over the last two decades, they broadcast a fixed number in the clear with no encryption. A duplicator costing under $30 clones one in about fifteen seconds, and consumer kiosks in supermarkets now do it for people who do not own a duplicator.

That does not mean an emergency rip-out. The sane path is multi-technology readers that accept both the old credential and an encrypted one, a re-badging cycle at a natural point like a lease year, and then disabling the legacy side. The readers are the capital cost; the credentials are consumables you were replacing anyway.

Sometimes, and it depends on the door and the occupancy rather than on preference. A magnetic lock provides no latching and holds only while powered, so it is never permitted on a fire-rated assembly, and where it is permitted on an egress door it brings a specific set of release requirements with it.

Those requirements include an overhead sensor releasing on approach, release on loss of power to either the sensor or the lock, release on fire alarm or sprinkler activation held until the system resets, and an independent push-to-exit button mounted 40 to 48 inches above the floor within five feet of the door that cuts lock power directly. In a lot of buildings an electrified latch or a properly specified strike is both cheaper and simpler than satisfying all of that, which is why we ask what problem the maglock is meant to solve before agreeing to one.

The honest answer is that the hardware is the small and predictable part and the door is the variable. A reader, a controller share and a credential batch land in a fairly tight band. What moves the number by thousands is the door itself: whether the frame accepts a strike, whether the lock is cylindrical or mortise, whether current has to be transferred through a moving leaf, how far the cable has to travel, and whether the door is on a rated assembly.

So we survey each door and price each door. Typical installed costs per door in this market span a wide range depending on all of the above, and we would rather show you three doors at three different numbers with the reason for each than average them into one figure that is wrong for every door on the schedule.

Usually, and it is often the right call. Modern entry panels commonly include a reader module or a keypad, so the lobby door gets one device instead of two and one hole in the wall instead of two. Where the intercom is a cloud platform, the same portal frequently manages both the directory and the credentials.

The trade-off is coupling. If the two are one system, a vendor decision about one is a decision about both, and a migration later is a bigger project. In buildings where the entry system and the interior doors have different lifespans (a lobby panel that will last fifteen years and office doors that get reconfigured every lease), keeping them separate but integrated is often better. We will lay both out rather than defaulting.

You do. Cloud platforms get registered to your organization with your email as the account owner, and the credentials are handed over at completion along with as-built documentation and the cable labeling map.

This is worth insisting on with anyone you hire. Buildings regularly discover that their own access system is registered to a contractor they no longer use, and that removing a former tenant’s fob requires a service call to that contractor. That is not a technical limitation of any platform. It is a commercial arrangement, and a building that cannot administer its own access list does not really control its own front door.

No, and that is deliberate. Terminating on a fire alarm control panel, programming it or taking it out of service is fire alarm work, which is a separately licensed activity in New York City, and it stays that way even when the connection is a single dry contact for lock release.

The compliant arrangement is that we provide and land a relay in an enclosure adjacent to the panel, and the building’s fire alarm contractor makes the final connection and performs the acceptance test. That interface also needs functional testing on a regular cycle: the alarm is activated and each electrified lock in the egress path is physically verified to release. That testing is part of the fire alarm contractor’s scope, not ours.