A clinic manager on Plains Road wants the front entrance hands-free during business hours, locked automatically at close, and still openable early with a card instead of a key. The records hallway should only open for two people. And every one of those doors has to swing open on its own if the fire alarm goes off. That is an access control conversation, and we have it constantly across Burlington and Hamilton.
Treco Locksmith & Security designs and installs access control and electrified door hardware for commercial buildings: offices, clinics, warehouses, and multi-tenant sites. We have been fully mobile since 2018, so we bring the install to your building, walk the doors with you, and spec hardware to the openings you actually have. The goal is always the same: a system that is secured, easy to manage, and safe to exit.
Access Control Installation, Door by Door
There is no single “access control system” that fits a building. There are doors, each with a job, and good design starts by reading the door.
Standalone Locks vs. Networked Systems
A standalone keypad door lock or card-reader lock keeps its codes and credentials on the door itself, with nothing running back to a panel. For a single storage room, server closet, or back-of-house door where you just want a PIN instead of a key, this is often the smartest, most affordable choice.
A card access system ties multiple doors back to a controller and management software. You assign credentials, set schedules, define who gets into which doors, and pull an audit trail of who went where and when. One dashboard runs the whole building — the right tool once you have several controlled doors, real staff turnover, or a need to know who opened a door at 2 a.m.
Most buildings end up with a mix: networked readers on the main and sensitive doors, standalone keypads on the low-traffic ones. We help you draw that line door by door.
Credentials: PIN, Card, Fob, or Phone
The credential is how a person proves they belong. The options trade off convenience against how easy they are to revoke:
- PIN — no hardware to hand out, but a code can be shared or shoulder-surfed
- Proximity card or fob — fast, cheap, easy to disable the instant one goes missing
- Mobile credential — runs on a phone staff already carry and rarely lose
- Combination — a card for daily entry plus a PIN for visitors or as a backup
We match the credential to your traffic and your tolerance for managing hardware.
Electric Strikes and Maglock Installation
The credential decides who gets in. The electrified hardware decides how the door releases — two approaches that behave very differently.
An electric strike replaces the strike plate the latch seats into. Energize or release it and the door pulls open while your existing lockset stays in place. Electric strikes suit most standard commercial doors and let you keep the mechanical lock as a backup layer.
A magnetic lock, or maglock, is an electromagnet that holds the door shut by raw force, with no moving parts. Maglocks are well suited to glass and aluminum storefront doors and high-cycle openings. But a maglock depends entirely on power and electronics to stay locked, so it has no mechanical fallback — and it carries the strictest egress requirements of any option. Either way, we match the hardware to the door, the frame, and the traffic, then size and install both.
Designed to Egress and Fire Code First
This is what separates a real access control install from a box bolted to a wall. Any maglock or electrified hardware on an egress door must release on a fire-alarm signal and on loss of power. That is fire and building code, and it is non-negotiable — a locked exit during an emergency is the failure mode the whole industry is built to prevent.
That is the meaning of fail-safe versus fail-secure. Fail-safe hardware unlocks when power is removed; fail-secure stays locked. On a designated exit, the egress side must be fail-safe, so people are never trapped. On an exterior entry door you may want fail-secure for security, as long as free exit is always preserved from the inside. We pick per door, deliberately.
We also build in request-to-exit properly: a motion sensor or a sensor in the exit hardware tells the system someone is leaving on purpose, releases the door, and keeps it from logging a false forced-entry alarm. On maglock doors especially, code calls for a clearly marked manual release so anyone can get out in one obvious motion. Free egress comes first; the security layer sits on top.
Managing Access Over Time
Access control earns its cost after the install. When someone leaves, revoke a credential instead of rekeying. Disable the card, fob, PIN, or phone in the software and it stops working at every door instantly — no locksmith visit, no cylinder swap, no wondering how many copies are out there. On a networked system the audit trail shows where and when that credential was last used, and remote credential management lets you add a contractor for a day or shut a door down from off-site.
For buildings that mix electronic and mechanical access, we pair the system with a master key systems plan so the mechanical backup is controlled to the same standard as the electronic side. And where you need an accessible, hands-free entrance, we integrate access control with automatic door operators: the reader validates the credential, releases the lock, and signals the operator to swing the door — secured and barrier-free, still wired to release on alarm.
Who We Build These Systems For
Access control is the electronic layer of our commercial locksmith work. Offices needing access levels between departments. Clinics balancing an open, accessible front entrance against locked-down records and medication storage. Warehouses with shift changes and loading doors. Property managers and multi-tenant buildings turning over tenants and contractors constantly. If you have more than a few controlled doors, you are the buyer.
We serve Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Stoney Creek, Milton, Grimsby, Brantford, Caledonia, and the wider Halton region. We have held a 5.0 rating across 204 Google reviews since 2018, because we design to the door, wire to code, and show up when we say we will.
To plan an access control system for your building, call (905) 977-8476 to talk through your doors, or contact us online. Tell us how many openings you are securing and what each door needs to do, and we will walk it before anything gets installed.