Fob, card and mobile entry for condo lobbies, medical offices, apartment buildings and commercial units — installed to Ontario Fire Code, with retrofits that reuse the wiring you already have.
North York covers a lot of ground, and its buildings vary more than people expect. A 1960s apartment block near Bathurst has different door hardware, different wiring, and different fire-separation requirements than a tower going up off Sheppard. Most of our work in the area is multi-tenant, and most of it is retrofit — we’re replacing something that already exists rather than starting from bare walls.
That usually works in your favour, and it’s the main reason we walk a site before quoting it. Two buildings a block apart can need completely different approaches.
The Yonge corridor towers. Lobby entry, garage door, storage lockers and amenity rooms on one credential.
Around Sheppard and Finch. Restricted access to records rooms, and after-hours staff entry without handing out keys.
Replacing worn-out lobby panels and failing buzzer systems, usually without opening walls.
Staff and contractor access on a schedule, so the cleaning crew’s fob works Tuesday night and not Sunday afternoon.
This is the most common reason we get called in to fix somebody else’s work. Putting a lock on a door in Ontario isn’t only a hardware decision. If that door is an exit, or part of a fire separation, the Fire Code has specific requirements — and a system that ignores them is a problem waiting for an inspection.
It’s the baseline any installer working in Ontario should build around without being asked. We raise it during the site walk rather than after, because fixing compliance on a finished install means doing the work twice.
An exit door has to open from the inside with a single releasing operation. No keys, no codes, no knowing a trick. Access control restricts who gets in — it can’t slow anyone getting out.
Electrified locking has to fail safe. When the fire alarm trips, or power to the panel drops, the doors unlock. This gets wired wrong more often than you’d think.
Key-both-sides hardware isn’t permitted on an exit door. If a previous contractor left one on your stairwell, it needs to come off.
Adding access control counts as modifying the door assembly, so it has to preserve both egress and the fire separation the door sits in.
A lot of North York buildings are older, and that’s usually an advantage. Anything with an existing buzzer or entry system already has wiring in the walls, and in many cases it’s perfectly usable. We test it before designing around it — when it passes, a fob system for a mid-rise often goes in without cutting drywall or running new conduit through finished corridors.
When it doesn’t pass, we say so and quote the cable run properly instead of forcing a marginal wire into service and hoping. Intermittent readers in a lobby are worse than no upgrade at all, because now nobody trusts the system and the property manager fields calls every week.
Existing cable gets checked before it’s designed into anything.
Work staged so residents keep entry access throughout. No door left unsecured overnight.
Sometimes the frame or closer is the real problem. We’ll tell you that before selling you a reader.
Lobby first, then garage, then common rooms — spread across budget cycles if a board needs it.
There’s no single right answer here. It depends on who lives or works in the building and who administers the system day to day.
Still the default for most multi-tenant buildings. Residents understand them immediately, replacements are simple, and a lost credential is deactivated in seconds rather than triggering a lock change. The tradeoff is that people share them, and they end up on the same ring as car keys.
Entry from a phone. A strong fit for newer condos and offices, and much easier to administer — nothing physical to hand over when someone moves in. Worth thinking twice about in a building where many residents would simply find a fob easier.
Useful as a backup method, or for spaces with rotating access like a shared meeting room. Rarely the right primary method on a main entrance, because codes get passed around and almost never get changed.
Fingerprint or face at the door. Makes sense for genuinely restricted rooms — a clinic’s records room, a server room, a pharmacy area. It’s overkill on a lobby door, and it raises privacy questions you’d rather not take on for a main entrance.
Separate from the credential itself is where the system lives and who runs it — and for a property manager, this often matters more than the hardware.
Add or revoke access from anywhere and pull entry reports without visiting the building. The practical winner for anyone running more than one property.
Everything stays on a local server with no subscription. Some organisations require this for policy reasons, and it’s a perfectly good answer when they do.
One login across every address you manage, instead of a different system and password at each site.
Tie entry events to video so you can see who badged in, not just that a credential was used.
Free, and genuinely necessary. We look at every door in scope, the condition of frames and closers, what wiring exists, where the panel can live, and which doors are exits or fire separations. That last point shapes everything after it.
You get a written scope: which doors, which hardware, which credential method, what the cabling involves, and what the compliance requirements mean for each opening. Nothing verbal.
Cable pulled and terminated, readers and locking hardware mounted, panel installed. In occupied buildings this is staged so entry keeps working throughout.
Credentials loaded, schedules and access groups configured, and release-on-alarm confirmed by actually testing it rather than assuming it from the wiring diagram.
We train whoever runs it day to day — usually the property manager or office administrator — on adding users, revoking credentials and pulling reports. Then we stay reachable, because the questions come later.
Yes, and it’s a legal requirement rather than a feature. In Ontario an exit door has to open from the inside with one releasing operation, with no keys or special knowledge needed. Electrified locks on those doors are wired to release when the fire alarm activates or when power to the panel is lost. If anyone proposes a system that keeps an exit locked during an alarm, walk away.
Often, but it depends on the door more than the lock. Frames that have shifted, worn closers and doors that don’t sit square cause more access control failures than electronics do. We check hardware condition during the site walk and tell you which doors are ready and which need work first.
Usually not. Most North York buildings with an existing entry system have wiring we can reuse once it tests clean. Where a new run is genuinely needed we route through existing pathways wherever possible, and we tell you up front if any drywall work is unavoidable.
Immediately, from wherever you are, on a cloud-managed system. That’s the practical reason to move off keys — a departing employee or a lost fob is handled in seconds, where a lost key means either living with the risk or re-keying the building.
Yes, and it’s the most requested addition we get. Tying the two together attaches video to each entry event, so you can see who badged in rather than only that a credential was used at 2:14am. Worth doing at install time instead of bolting on later.
The doors keep working. Cloud-managed systems store credentials locally at the panel, so entry continues normally during an outage — you temporarily lose remote administration and live reporting, not access itself. Anything that needs a live connection to open a door isn’t something we’d put on a main entrance.
Yes, and for property managers running multiple North York addresses it’s usually the biggest practical win. One login, one place to add or revoke a credential, and consistent reporting instead of a different system at every site.
A few doors in an office is often a single day. A mid-rise lobby and garage retrofit typically runs a few days, and phased work in an occupied building takes longer by design — we’d rather stage it than leave doors unsecured overnight. You get a schedule with the written quote.
We’ll look at the doors, check the wiring you already have, flag anything affecting Fire Code compliance, and put a written scope together. No charge, no obligation.
Request a site survey Call (416) 890-3639North York is a core service area for us, and we install and support access control across the wider region.
Related: Access Control Systems · Intercom Systems · Condo Security · Commercial Security · Structured Cabling · Security Cameras in North York
Header photo: Yonge Street, North York, by Canmenwalker — CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
