What happens on installation day

Most installation problems are decided before anybody arrives. By the time there is a drill on site the choices that matter — which doors, in what order, with whom — have already been made or already been skipped.

Before the day: the survey

A door survey counts door TYPES, not rooms. Sixty rooms is rarely sixty identical doors: a floor refurbished at a different time, a fire door of a different thickness, a handful with a non-standard backset. Every one of those is a second visit if it is found on the day.

• Leaf thickness and material, per door type.
• The existing lock and its backset.
• Whether the door is left or right handed.
• Frame condition, and whether the strike plate can be reused.

On the day

1. 1Walk the floor with whoever holds the keys, and confirm the list against the doors.
2. 2Fit in the agreed sequence, finishing each block before starting the next.
3. 3Test every door twice — once with a card, once with the mechanical override.
4. 4Hand the old locks back, counted.
5. 5Train the desk, on the shift that will actually use it.

The last two are the ones that get dropped when a day overruns, and they are the two that cause the calls in week one. A floor that is fitted but not handed over is not finished.

Handing is the one decision that cannot be fixed on the day with a different screw, which is why the survey records it per door and why the film above exists.

Who needs to be there

One person from the property with the authority to answer a question. Not to supervise — to decide. A question that needs an answer at eleven and gets one at five has cost a floor, and that is the single most common reason an installation slips.

Our own installations run floor by floor so no room comes off sale, and the sequence is written with the front office rather than handed to it. The rooms housekeeping has already turned are the rooms that can be worked on now.