A communal entrance door can look like a relatively straightforward line on a construction budget. For housing providers, developers and property managers responsible for thousands of residents, the decision behind that line can continue to have consequences for decades. That distinction is driving a change in thinking at Birmingham-based security door manufacturer Warrior Doors, where Managing Director Brett Barratt believes communal entrances should increasingly be viewed as long-term assets.
“The question I think people should ask is very simple: what do we expect when we spend £10,000 or £15,000 on an entrance door?” said Barratt. “In a high-footfall residential building, we should be thinking in decades. You are buying an asset which is going to be used every day by hundreds of people.”
It is a philosophy shaped by almost 30 years working with councils, housing associations, contractors and property managers. During that time, Warrior Doors has been invited into developments where entrance systems have required substantial remedial work within the early years of their life. In some cases, replacement has followed replacement. Elsewhere, engineers have repeatedly returned to adjust doors, replace hardware and keep entrances operating.
The names of those developments matter less than the pattern. One recent project involved a relatively new residential development where several generations of entrance doors had been installed within a matter of years. By the time Warrior Doors became involved, expenditure extended well beyond the original purchase price. Repairs, replacement systems, engineering visits and temporary security arrangements had accumulated alongside the original capital cost.
Another project involved multiple recently constructed residential blocks. The entrance doors had already undergone modifications and repairs when Warrior Doors was asked to assess them. Across a development with numerous entrances, individual interventions soon became a significant programme of expenditure. These experiences have convinced Barratt that procurement needs to consider capital expenditure and operational expenditure together.
“The cheapest bid is rarely the lowest cost,” he said. “The purchase price is easy to see because it is sitting on a quotation. The difficult part is putting a value on everything that happens afterwards.”
Those costs can travel surprisingly far through an organisation. An engineer attending site carries a direct financial cost. Property and housing teams spend time managing the issue. Temporary security may be required while an entrance is being repaired. Residents contact their landlord or managing agent. Contractors, architects, specifiers and manufacturers can become involved in determining responsibility.
For Barratt, this is where the economics of a door become considerably broader than its original invoice.
“If somebody has to leave the job they were supposed to be doing that morning to deal with an entrance problem, there is a cost,” he said. “If you have security personnel covering an entrance, there is a cost. If residents are repeatedly calling their housing officer, there is a cost. These things rarely appear alongside the original price of the door, but somebody ultimately pays for them.”
The environmental cost of replacement
There is also a physical consequence to replacing building products more frequently. Warrior Doors recently achieved ISO 14001 environmental management certification, formalising an approach to environmental performance which the company says has increasingly influenced its manufacturing decisions. Manufacturing a steel security door requires raw material, processing, energy and transport. Installation brings further journeys and site activity. Repeating the process brings another cycle of material and energy consumption.
Barratt believes longevity therefore deserves a more prominent place in discussions around embodied carbon and responsible procurement.
“A product that remains in service for 20 or 30 years has a very different story from one which has to be manufactured and installed several times over the same period,” he said.
“We spend a lot of time as an industry looking at individual environmental specifications, which are important. I also think we have to look at how long the complete product is going to perform in the environment it was designed for.”
Warrior Doors has examples of its communal entrance systems remaining in service after more than two decades, including doors installed in demanding, high-footfall residential environments. The company currently provides a ten-year warranty on its door and frame system. That longevity has helped shape what Barratt describes as responsible investment: considering the expected working life of an entrance alongside its initial capital cost.
When the entrance becomes part of the brand
The calculation extends into private residential developments. Modern apartment schemes increasingly compete through experience. Reception areas can resemble hotels, with concierge desks, lounges, gyms and carefully considered interiors. Residents and investors may be paying substantial sums for a property and its associated service. The entrance sits at the front of that experience.
“When somebody walks into a residential development, the entrance is one of the first things they interact with,” said Barratt. “If the door is working properly, people simply walk through it. That is exactly how it should be.”
Repeated maintenance interventions create a very different experience. An entrance temporarily secured by additional personnel, a door awaiting an engineer or residents repeatedly reporting access problems all become part of their perception of the building. For developers, housing providers and managing agents, Barratt argues that this makes reliability a reputational consideration as much as an engineering one.
“A development can have beautiful apartments and excellent communal facilities, but residents still use that entrance every day,” he said. “The quality of the building has to carry all the way through to the products that people depend on.”
A procurement challenge
Perhaps the hardest part of changing this approach is the way construction procurement itself operates. The organisation specifying or purchasing an entrance may be different from the organisation that eventually owns and manages it. Capital expenditure can sit within one budget while maintenance, security and resident management sit elsewhere.
A saving achieved during construction can therefore become somebody else’s operational expenditure several years later. Warrior Doors believes bringing those two sides of the calculation together would give buyers a clearer picture of value.
“The person making the buying decision and the person dealing with that entrance ten years later need to be part of the same conversation,” Barratt added.
“For us, this is bigger than selling a particular door. It is about how the industry thinks about these products. A communal entrance is part of a building that could stand for generations. The entrance should be considered with that timescale in mind.”
It amounts to a simple proposition from a manufacturer approaching its 30th year: judge the cost of an entrance by the years it serves the building, the people who use it and the resources required to keep it there. For an industry increasingly focused on value, carbon and the long-term performance of the built environment, that may prove a more useful measure than the number at the bottom of the original tender.
