Fitting locks in a hotel that cannot close

Nobody replaces hotel locks in an empty building. The property is trading, the rooms are sold, and the installation has to happen around both. The constraint is not technical — it is that a room out of service is revenue that does not come back.

Work the floor, not the building

We fit floor by floor, so no room is taken off sale. The unit of work is a block of rooms that housekeeping has already turned, not the whole property, and the block is back in service the same day it is started.

In practice that means the schedule is written with the front office, not handed to it. Housekeeping's turn order decides the fitting order, because the rooms that are already empty are the rooms that can be worked on now.

What actually causes a delay

Three things, and only one of them is about the lock.

1. Doors that are not what the survey said they were. A floor refurbished at a different time, a fire door with a different thickness, a handful of rooms with a non-standard backset.
2. No access to the rooms that were scheduled. A late check-out, an extended stay, a block held for a group.
3. Nobody at the property empowered to decide. A question that needs an answer at 11am and gets one at 5pm has cost a floor.

The first is why a survey counts the door types rather than the rooms. Sixty rooms is not sixty identical doors, and the cost of finding that out on the day is a second visit.

The handover is part of the job

A lock system that works and a front desk that cannot issue a card are the same thing from a guest's point of view. We train the desk before we leave the property — writing a guest card, writing a housekeeping card, cancelling one, and what to do when a card does not open a door.

Ask any supplier what their handover includes and who it is given to. The answer should name the shift, not the hotel.

What to ask for in the quotation

• A door survey before the price, not after.
• The sequence, by floor, agreed with your front office.
• Who trains the desk, and on which shift.
• What the old locks are returned as, and to whom.
• What happens to a room that cannot be accessed on its scheduled day.