Electromagnetic locks and the BC Building Code

If you own or manage a building in BC with electromagnetic locks on the doors, the practical risk is simple: a mag-lock that does not release the way the code requires can trap people in a fire, and the responsibility for that lands on you, not on the integrator who sold it. The BC Building Code puts compliance with the code squarely on the owner (BCBC 2024, Division A, Article 1.2.1.2).

There is a second, quieter problem. The BC Building Code was renumbered in the 2024 edition, and the electromagnetic lock provisions moved. A large amount of BC-facing content — installer blog posts, spec sheets, even some internal building manuals — still points at the 2018 numbering. If your compliance file, your fire safety plan, or your access control specification cites the old sentence numbers, it is citing a superseded edition.

This article covers what changed in the numbering, what the current provisions actually require of a door, and what you should check on a building you already own.

What changed in the numbering

In the 2018 BC Building Code, the electromagnetic lock provisions sat at Sentences (4) and (5) of Article 3.4.6.16. In the 2024 edition, the same subject matter sits at Sentences (5) and (6) of Article 3.4.6.16.

The Article number did not move. Only the sentence numbers inside it shifted by one. That is exactly the kind of change that survives a copy-paste for years without anyone noticing, because the reference still looks right and still lands in the correct Article.

Two things follow from that:

• If a document you rely on cites Sentence (4) of that Article as the current mag-lock provision, it is on the 2018 numbering. It is not necessarily wrong about the substance, but it is out of date on the reference, and anyone checking your file against the current code will find a mismatch.
• The current citations to use are 3.4.6.16.(5) and 3.4.6.16.(6). Where you need to refer to the 2018 numbering — for example when you are reconciling an older permit set — say plainly that it is the superseded 2018 numbering rather than presenting it as current.

This matters most in documents that outlive the people who wrote them: fire safety plans, strata records, tender documents, and the "as-built" package handed over at the end of a project.

The requirement the mag-lock has to live with

Start with the general rule, because every mag-lock argument comes back to it. BCBC 2024, Division B, Sentence 3.4.6.16.(1) sets the baseline for principal entrance doors and exit doors: the door has to be openable by a single releasing operation, without keys, without special devices, and without specialized knowledge. One motion, and nothing you have to have been told about in advance.

That principle is the whole subject. A locked door that a person cannot open on the way out — because the power failed, because a fob did not read, because the release was on the wrong side — is the failure everything else in this article is arranged to prevent.

Two codes carry it, and they do different jobs. The Building Code governs the design: what may be installed, and on what conditions. The Fire Code governs every day after handover: that the means of egress stays usable, and that the hardware is tested on a schedule. For a building already standing — which is most readers of this page — the Fire Code is the one that matters in practice, because the person who arrives and writes you up is a fire inspector, not a plan reviewer.

Electromagnetic locks are then dealt with as a permitted arrangement subject to conditions, set out in Sentences 3.4.6.16.(5) and 3.4.6.16.(6). The structure of the code is the important part here: a mag-lock on an egress door is not a default-legal device that you can install and then work out the release scheme afterwards. It is permitted because it satisfies a specific set of conditions, and if the installed reality drifts from those conditions, the permission goes with it.

That is why the most common real-world failure is not the lock itself but the release path around it. A mag-lock installed with a release scheme that satisfied the conditions on the day of inspection can quietly stop satisfying them when someone reprograms the access control panel, swaps the request-to-exit sensor, disables a release button because staff kept leaning on it, or adds a second latch to stop a door rattling.

Two related provisions are worth having in front of you when you review a door:

• 3.1.8.15 deals with door latches, including positive latching where a door is part of a fire separation. A door that has to latch positively in a fire separation has requirements of its own that are independent of whatever electrified hardware you put on it.
• 3.3.1.13 deals with doors in an access to exit — the route people take to reach an exit, not just the exit door itself. Mag-locks are frequently installed on interior doors along that route, and owners often treat those doors as "not egress doors" because they are not on the exterior. That assumption is where a lot of non-compliant installations start.

If a salesperson tells you a mag-lock is fine on a given door, the useful question is not "is it code compliant?" — everyone says yes to that. The useful question is: which sentence permits it here, and which conditions in that sentence is this door relying on? An integrator who works in BC regularly can answer that on the spot for the door in front of them.

Testing does not stop at handover

The BC Fire Code requires egress doors to be tested on a recurring basis, with a monthly interval for the general egress door check and a twelve-month interval for the electromagnetic lock check, under Article 2.7.2.1. We are citing the article number here rather than reproducing its wording, because the wording and the governing edition are the kind of thing you should confirm against the copy your authority having jurisdiction works from, not against a web page.

The operational point stands regardless: the electromagnetic locks in your building are on a testing schedule, and the schedule is longer than the general door test. That longer interval is a trap in practice. A monthly test has enough rhythm that somebody notices when it stops happening. An annual test is exactly the kind of task that survives one turnover of building staff or one change of service contractor and then disappears.

If you cannot produce a dated record of the last mag-lock test for each door, you do not have a testing program — you have an assumption.

What to check on a building you already own

You can do most of this walk yourself in an afternoon, with the building's drawings and a notepad.

1. Build the door list. Every door with a mag-lock, by location. Include interior doors on the route to an exit, not just perimeter doors. Note which doors are in a fire separation.

2. Walk each door as an occupant, not as an owner. Approach it the way a visitor would, at the speed a visitor would, and try to leave. If getting out took more than one obvious operation, or required you to know something, write the door down. Do this in the direction of egress travel, and do it with the building in its normal state — not with a technician standing at the panel.

3. Find the release scheme and write it down. For each door: what releases the lock, and what happens on loss of power, on fire alarm, and on a request to exit. If nobody in the building can tell you, that is itself the finding.

4. Check the paperwork's citations — and be careful which documents you change. Open your fire safety plan, your access control specification, and any compliance letter in the building file.

For forward-looking documents — specifications, tenders, fire safety plans, anything describing what should be true from now on — a reference to Sentence (4) as the current mag-lock provision is on the 2018 numbering and should move to 3.4.6.16.(5) and 3.4.6.16.(6).

For historical documents — the permit set, the as-builts, a compliance letter issued at the time — leave the citation alone and annotate it. A building permitted under the 2018 code was approved against the 2018 numbering, and "correcting" that record makes it misstate the edition the building was actually approved under. The record is not wrong; it is dated, and dated is what it should be.

There is a sharper reason to annotate rather than delete. Sentence (4) still exists in the 2024 code — it is now a different requirement, about the force needed to release the hardware. So a document citing 3.4.6.16.(4) today is not merely using stale numbering; it now points at a live provision that says something else entirely. That is the failure mode worth catching, and it is invisible if you only check whether the number still resolves.

5. Find the last test date for each mag-lock. Not the last service call — the last test. If the record does not exist, start the record now rather than reconstructing one.

6. Take the list to your authority having jurisdiction, not to the internet. The local building and fire officials are the ones who will interpret these provisions for your building. Bringing them a specific door list gets you a specific answer.

If you are being sold mag-locks right now

Ask for the specific sentence being relied on for each door, in writing, using the 2024 numbering. Ask what happens to the door on power loss, on alarm, and on request to exit — again, per door, in writing. Ask who is responsible for the annual test after handover and what the record looks like. And keep the answer in the building file, because in a few years the only version of this conversation that still exists is the written one.

A quote that cannot survive those four questions is not cheaper than one that can. It has just moved the cost to the day something goes wrong, when the code will look to the owner.