Working with Multi-Site Operators

What changes when you operate more than one site

A single facility can buy locks the way it buys light bulbs — whatever is available, whenever it runs out. That stops working at about the second or third site.

Three things break first:

• Specification drift. Sites built in different years end up with different cylinders, different finishes and different keys.
• Key confusion. Nobody can say with confidence which key opens which unit, or how many manager keys exist.
• Replacement failure. A cylinder ordered three years later arrives in a size that no longer matches the doors it was meant for.

None of these are product problems. They are documentation problems, and they get expensive quietly.

Start with the door, not the catalogue

The specification begins with a measurement, not a product code. For each site — or each build phase, if the site grew over time — record the cylinder bore size and the door type.

Phase-built sites are the usual trap. Units added in a later phase often use a different cylinder, and a single site can carry two or three sizes. Measure a sample from each phase rather than assuming the first door speaks for the whole property.

Fix the key structure before production

Keying cannot be changed after the locks are made. Before ordering, five questions need a written answer:

1. How many units in total, per site and across the group?
2. Must every tenant key be unique to its unit, or may units be keyed alike in groups?
3. How many manager keys are needed, and what must each one open — one site, or the group?
4. What happens when a tenant key is lost — rekey, replace the cylinder, or issue a spare?
5. Which units need overlock or lockout hardware, and who authorises its use?

Answering these after the order is placed means either accepting the structure you got, or paying for new cylinders.

Write it down, or it will drift again

A specification only survives staff turnover if it exists outside someone's memory. In practice it needs four things:

• The lock model and cylinder size, with photographs of the actual door
• The keying structure, including how many manager keys exist and where they are held
• Packing and branding rules, so a reorder arrives looking like the last one
• The supplier's reference or specification number, quoted on every future order

We keep the specification on file per customer so a replacement order matches the original, even if the original product code has changed since.

Plan the replacement path, not just the first order

The first order is the easy one. The orders that hurt are the small ones placed in a hurry years later, when a site needs two hundred cylinders and nobody remembers the specification.

Two habits remove most of that risk: keep a written spares allowance for the units most likely to be rekeyed or damaged, and always quote the specification reference when reordering so the supplier checks it against what was shipped before.

What we typically see

Across multi-site enquiries, the same patterns recur:

• A group that can describe its gate access policy in detail, but not its unit lock specification.
• Two sites in the same portfolio using different cylinder sizes because they were built four years apart.
• A first order placed on a single site, then a scramble to match it across the rest.
• A reorder that arrives correct on size but wrong on packing, because packing was never written into the specification.

Each of these is cheaper to prevent than to correct, and none of them require a different product — only a different starting order.

How we work on a multi-site order

We start with a sample and a measurement rather than a price list: fit is confirmed on a physical sample before a quantity is committed. From there the order is built as a documented specification — lock, cylinder, keying, branding, packing — and deliveries can be phased per site rather than shipped as one bulk consignment.

If you are standardising an existing portfolio, send a photograph and a measurement from each phase and we will confirm what fits before anything is ordered.