BACK TO BASICS Small Changes for a Large-Scale Job Tony Wiersielis, CPL, CFDI, explains how some of his processes change when completing work on large jobs. T his month, I want to tell you about a big job we recently com- pleted in New England. This was a training facility with buildings spread out across a large campus, including numerous dormitories, both occupied and unoccupied. It took two weeks to complete, with four of us working the first week and three the second week. Because this was a large-scale job, I did a few things differently than I would on a small job. This information is what I want to pass on to you, should you ever find yourself in the same situation. The Story The issue was that someone lost a grand master key, which opened nearly every door on the campus. Naturally, panic ensued. We were told that there were about 600 cores spread out over the campus. It turned out to be closer to 750. These were a mixture of Best and Arrow interchangeable cores. We were told that all the cores were the same keyway, but it turned out to be three different keyways. One of these keyways had two different systems under it. Once we had all this information, we were able to calculate the recombination of one chamber, the first, in each core. We did this for each system until we had four separate combi- nations: one for each variation. Dumping and repinning the first chamber to our new combination removed the old GM from the system without affecting the existing operating keys. The facilities locksmith issued new GMs to whoever had the old one. In case you’re wondering why all the cores weren’t replaced instead, it was because of money, or rather, the lack of it. The customer wanted the least expensive way out of the problem. You might also wonder why the facility locksmith didn’t do this job himself. He was “self taught” in the trade and maintaining an IC system installed years before he got the job. This project was a bit too much for him to handle by himself. We had several issues going forward. One was that we could only be in the occu- pied dorms when the students were in class, and they usually came back at 4 p.m. While we were there, we had a facilities guy with us as an escort and to help us find various locks. Having to leave a building by 4 p.m. made for a short day for us. We were all far from home, and we’d normally try to work longer days to get the job done quicker. In this case, we decided to move to either a training building, now empty of students, WWW.ALOA.ORG or an unoccupied dorm, at 4 p.m. The fa- cility was fine with that. The other issue was the discovery that about 10 to 15 percent of the cores didn’t want to come out no matter what we did. These had to be bypassed and noted so we could come back and drill them out. We then needed to build new cores for replacement. The Plan We decided to bring our pinning equip- ment to each building and set up there. I would dump, recombinate and test the cores while one or two others would pull them and bring them to me in batches. We had another one of our guys at the cam- pus lock shop. When we found cores that couldn’t be pulled, we’d call him with the core marks and he would build new cores to replace them. For the new guys, some cores have a core number stamped on the face of the core above the plug. This is what I mean by “core mark.” This number usually corresponds to a list of key numbers and key cuts supplied with an IC system. If you can read the core mark on a core, you can look up that mark on the list and see the key cuts of the indi- vidual key that operates that core. Not all cores are face stamped; some are stamped on the side of the core and aren’t visible until you get the core out. Some don’t have any core mark at all, usually because the customer doesn’t want anyone finding a stamped key and finding the stamped core that it will open. Also on this list you’ll find the GM, sub- master and control key bittings (key cuts). With this information, you can calculate the pins needed to combinate a core to work with all the keys that need to operate it, as we did on this job. You’ll also find core marks on hardware schedules. A line on the schedule will have a door number/room number, what hard- ware goes on that door and what core mark JANUARY 2017 KEYNOTES 51
