Effective Site Surveying

What do you like most about your work? When corporations survey their employees, they are often surprised as to the overwhelming answer regarding this question. Most employees choose job satisfaction over money, perks and benefits.

Further studies find that job satisfaction is directly related to empowerment and challenge. I have had the most satisfaction managing large-scale master key projects.

The scope of my first large-scale project included 200-plus buildings mostly in a few neighboring cities. This project included about 100,000 doors. Another project included the key management of 100-or-so facilities decentralized across America. The total number of doors was less than 20,000, but the challenge was to develop a network and standardize processes and procedures. Still another project regarded the development and ongoing management of multiple projects for many different chain-store accounts. Each account had hundreds or thousands of small stores throughout America. Each store had between three and five locks to control. The challenge was to standardize hardware and manage lock services efficiently.

The Goal of Site Surveying

The goal of site surveying is to document all data regarding doors and door hardware. Primarily, the most critical information relates to: door conditions; what hardware is mounted on the door; how the door serves the building; and how the door serves the occupants. Secondarily, it is good to document how the door is keyed. Remember that keying information is dynamic, changing all the time.

After the data is collected into a database, valuable reports can be generated. These reports can:

• Establish a preventative maintenance program;
• Track the history of repairs to doors
• Determine the appropriate vendors to call-out for repairs; and
• Provide management with the numbers necessary to allocate more time and money to door issues.

Effective site surveying is all about getting the scope of door operations defined into databases. Here is a real-life example that demonstrates what can be done when door operations are recorded into databases.

A chain-store account was unaware that $100,000 per year was spent repairing the doors that lead into managers' offices. A report was generated of all locations where expenses were incurred relating to manager office doors. The report instigated random inspections where it was discovered that all incidents were attributed to the installation of two-piece adjustable strike plates.

Usually the dead-latch button portion of the latch assembly of a lock will rest on the edge of the strike plate. When the two-piece strike plate fell out of adjustment, both the dead-latch button and the latch portions of the latch assembly dropped into the keeper hole of the strike plate. This action caused the latch assembly to prematurely fail.

The usual remedy was to call out the local locksmith. The locksmith in most cases replaced the entire lock or in some cases replaced out the latch assembly. In almost all cases, the culprit strike plate was not replaced.

The corrective (and cost-effective) solution was to initiate a chain-wide replacement of two-piece adjustable strike plates with single-piece equivalents. (See Figure 1)

Tools of the Trade

Smart employers know how to convert data collections into expense savings. You will need to allocate time to collect the data and resources to make it happen.

You will need a dedicated laptop to perform effective site surveying. The laptop allows you to move to remote locations. Even if all your site surveying is in a few buildings, the laptop is essential to develop a temporary office for inputting gathered information on the fly.

You will need to know how to use a spreadsheet application. Microsoft Excel is preferred as it is the company standard. If you don't know how to use Excel, learn. It is the easiest means to enter data into tables. You will need access to a scanner and printer.