Decide Who Gets Through Which Door, and When

Fobs and cards are cheap, familiar, and work for everyone, but they can be cloned and people lend them. Phone credentials are harder to copy, can't be left in a drawer, and can be issued or killed remotely the minute you need to — though they lean on everyone carrying a charged phone. Most buildings we work with end up mixing them: phone credentials for staff, fobs for contractors and residents who prefer them, and a card format for anyone who can't use either. We'll walk you through the mix for your site rather than pushing one format.

With keys, you have two options: re-key the building or live with the risk that a copy is still out there. With access control, their credential dies the day they leave — revoked from your phone in seconds, no locksmith, no new keys for everyone else. The audit log also shows you every door they used on the way out, so you know exactly what their access looked like before it ended. This is usually the single fastest payback of the whole system for offices with turnover.

Cloud-managed platforms — Brivo is the one we install most here — run the management side from the vendor's cloud, so you can add doors, issue credentials, and pull logs from anywhere, and updates arrive without a site visit. Controller-based systems like ICT Protege keep the decision-making hardware in your building, which some organizations require for their data. Either way, doors keep working if the internet drops, because the controller at the door makes the unlock decision. Cloud suits property managers running multiple sites from one screen; on-premise suits single sites with stricter data requirements. We install both, and we'll tell you which fits your site.

It depends on what each door needs, which is why we quote from a site walk rather than a rate card. The main drivers: the locking hardware (an electric strike is a different job than a mag lock with the required exit hardware), the reader and credential type, the cable run between door and controller, whether the door needs a request-to-exit sensor and door-position switch, and whether the platform is a one-time purchase or a cloud subscription. A plain interior office door sits at one end of that range; a parkade gate with automatic operators sits at the other. The site walk is free and the quote is per-door, so you can phase it.

Yes — multi-tenant buildings are one of the places access control earns its keep fastest. One system can cover the main entry, parkade, elevator floors, amenity rooms, and bike storage, with each resident or tenant getting exactly the doors they're entitled to and nothing else. When a unit changes hands or a tenant moves out, you revoke their credentials instead of re-keying common doors for the whole building. For a property manager running several buildings, one platform can cover all of them from one screen, and the audit log gives council a factual record when something goes wrong in a common area.