Start Specification Process With Thorough Analysis of Facility Entriestest

By James Piper, P.E.

February 2015

The best place to start is with thorough needs analysis of the facility. For hardware selection, managers need to consider the level of use for a particular door. How much traffic passes through the door in a typical day? Is the traffic flow continuous, or does it peak at a certain time? Is the door in use 24 hours each day, or is its use limited to specific times? Is vandalism a major consideration?

To help managers select hardware that will stand up to the level of use and abuse for an application, the American National Standards Institute and the Builders Hardware Manufacturer's Association (ANSI/BHMA) have developed standards. Components receive a grade of one, two, or three, based on testing for the operational durability and the life of the finish, where Grade 1 hardware is the most durable and expensive.

The groups give ratings for the number of cycles managers can expect a particular device to last without failing.

The grade a particular product receives appears on the manufacturer's product data sheet. Knowing the level of use a particular door is likely to receive helps managers select the proper grade of hardware for that application.

Besides determining the grade of hardware an upgrade will require, the needs analysis must identify areas within the facility that require protection, including protection of the building, as well as its occupants and contents.

When considering areas requiring protection, managers need to examine bidirectional threats. Is the upgrade offering protection from outside threats entering a particular area or from losses from within the area?

For each area, managers need to identify the threat and the direction of the threat. They can determine this by examining the operations conducted within a given area, as well as the contents of that area. Some of the questions for managers to consider include: have incidents occurred in the area? How severe were those incidents? What was the level of security at the time? Did that level of security limit the severity of the incidents, or was it inadequate? What are the legal and liability implications if a similar incident should occur in the future?

By conducting a needs analysis, a manager can identify the location and level of security required for a particular facility. The analysis also will help prevent managers from overreacting to perceived security needs, actions that increase operating costs and interfere with operations while producing very few returns.