How we work

What actually happens between your first call and a working door

Survey, written scope, install, handover. Below is what each stage involves, what you receive at the end of it, what we need from you to start it, how long it usually takes, and the things that reliably move a schedule.

The sequence

Four stages, in the same order every time

Whether it is one door in a storefront or a 180-unit riser replacement, the sequence does not change, only how long each part takes.

Survey

We come to the building and open things. Riser and panel condition, existing cable type and usable conductor count, door hardware and frame construction, power, network capacity, and the physical route any new cable has to take. Photographs of every one of those. You get a verbal read before we leave and nothing is invoiced for a standard survey inside the service area.

Written scope

A document, not a number in a text message. Exact hardware by make and model, exact cable type and fire listing, every door and station listed individually, what is being reused, what is being replaced, what we found that is outside this scope, and a fixed price. Genuine unknowns are named as unknowns with a capped allowance and a trigger, never buried in a lump sum.

Install

Scheduled around the building rather than around us: house-rule work hours, service elevator windows, hallway and elevator protection, tenant notices where in-unit access is needed, daily cleanup. Work is phased so no apartment loses door release overnight. Cable is labeled at both ends and penetrations are firestopped as they are made, not at the end.

Handover

Every door, station and camera tested with you present, including the fire alarm release on any electrically locked egress door. You receive as-built documentation, the labeling map, admin credentials registered in your name, written warranty terms, and a walkthrough of how to add and revoke a user without calling anyone.

Timing

How long each stage really takes

Elapsed time, not billable hours. The gap between the two is almost always approval and procurement, not labor.

Stage	Typical elapsed time	What stretches it
Site survey	45 to 90 minutes on site; half a day for a large riser or a portfolio walk	No access to the riser closet, basement panel or roof; the super unavailable; a locked electrical room nobody has a key to
Written scope back to you	2 to 5 business days after the survey	Specialty hardware needing a quote, or an egress question that has to go to the architect or engineer before we will put a method in writing
Board or managing agent approval	4 to 8 weeks in a co-op or condo	Monthly board meeting cadence, alteration agreement revisions, certificate of insurance wording, and engineer or building architect review
Hardware procurement	3 days to 6 weeks	Specialty strikes, custom-engraved directories, anything on allocation, and long-lead panels. We tell you which items are the long pole before you sign
Access control, per opening	Roughly one day per door	Grout-filled hollow metal frames, doors needing a power transfer or electric hinge, and openings where the electrician has to land a feed first
Intercom retrofit reusing the existing riser, ~20 units	2 to 4 days	Apartments that will not answer the door for in-unit station swaps. Expect two or three attempts on 10 to 15% of units
Intercom with new riser cable, ~20 units	1 to 3 weeks	Blocked or non-existent pathways, plaster-over-lath public hall walls, asbestos or lead protocols in a pre-1960 building
Camera system, 8 to 16 cameras	2 to 5 days	Core drilling, lift requirements, firestopping, and switch or storage upgrades that were not in the original budget
Handover and training	Half a day	Coordinating the fire alarm contractor for the joint release test, and getting the right person in the room to receive the admin accounts

Ranges observed on typical New York work, subject to survey. Your building will have at least one thing on it that none of these rows anticipated. That is what the allowance line in the scope is for.

Stage one

The survey: what we are actually looking for

A survey is not a walkthrough with a clipboard. It is a set of specific measurements, because each one changes the price by a meaningful multiple.

The riser

On a legacy multi-tenant intercom the first question is how many conductors are in the shaft and how many of them still work. A classic New York apartment riser is three common #22 AWG conductors plus one selective conductor per apartment, so a 40-unit building has a 43-plus conductor cable in it, most of it decades old and some of it cloth or rubber insulated. We ring out the pairs and count what is usable. That single number decides whether the job is a two-day retrofit on the existing cable or a riser replacement costing an order of magnitude more, and any contractor pricing before they know it is pricing for their own convenience.

Power and the head end

We meter the amplifier transformer at the secondary and the primary, not at a display LED. On door release faults we measure voltage at the strike itself, because on most legacy systems power runs to the amplifier first and then out to the strike, which makes the run between them the prime suspect. On access control we total the inrush and holding current of every lock, add a 25% margin, and check the existing supply against that number. A maglock draws continuously while a fail-secure strike only draws during the unlock pulse, so a building moving from strikes to maglocks can need several times the standby battery it has.

The door

Frame type decides the strike. Hollow metal is often grout-filled and needs a die grinder rather than a jigsaw; an aluminum storefront jamb may be only one and three-quarter to two inches deep and simply cannot take a standard strike body, particularly next to a sidelite. On a warped or settled pre-war door the latch can be preloaded against the keeper hard enough that no strike will swing, and no amount of new hardware fixes that until the closer, the hinges or the door itself is dealt with. We also check whether a door position switch exists anywhere on the building. Usually it does not, which is why nobody knows the service door has been propped open for six months.

Network, cable route and heights

Any PoE device gets a power class check: a large touchscreen entrance panel with an integrated heater and infrared illuminator will exceed the 12.95 watts a standard PoE port guarantees at the device, so it needs PoE+ or a local supply. Cable routes get measured against the 100-meter channel limit, not estimated. Spaces get identified as plenum, riser or neither, because that determines cable listing before anything is ordered. And every operable part (reader, keypad, call button, exit button) gets a mounting height between 15 and 48 inches above finished floor, with door hardware between 34 and 48 inches, to meet the 2010 ADA Standards and ICC A117.1-2009 as referenced by the NYC Building Code. A 54-inch reader height is a legacy dimension and is not acceptable on new work.

Stage two

The written scope: what is in the document

The scope is the deliverable that separates a contractor from a salesperson, and it is the thing you should compare between bidders instead of comparing headline prices.

Every device by make and model number. Not “video intercom panel” but the actual part, so you can look up what it does and what it costs.
Cable type and fire listing per run. Plenum-listed cable where the space handles environmental air, riser-listed cable in vertical shafts, and neither substituted downwards. Plenum may replace riser and general purpose; the reverse is never permitted, and it is a live inspection failure.
A door-by-door and station-by-station schedule. Each opening listed with its locking method, release method, monitoring, and who is responsible for the power feed.
The egress decision in writing. Whether an opening uses a sensor-release arrangement, hardware release built into the lever or panic bar, delayed egress, or none of the above, and the release conditions that go with it. On a sensor-release maglock that means an egress-side sensor, unlock on loss of power to either the sensor or the lock, a “PUSH TO EXIT” button mounted 40 to 48 inches above the floor within five feet of the door that directly interrupts lock power and holds the door unlocked for at least 30 seconds, release on fire alarm and on sprinkler or detection activation held until reset, emergency lighting on the egress side, and UL 294 listed equipment. If a door cannot satisfy all of that, the scope says so instead of installing it anyway.
What we are reusing. Existing riser pairs, existing coax, existing conduit and existing cameras, each named individually with the risk stated. Reuse is usually the right call and it is also where surprises live.
Named unknowns with capped allowances. “Condition of the riser above floor 6 cannot be confirmed until the ceiling in the sixth-floor hall is opened; allowance of X, triggered only if the pair count falls below Y.” You see the ceiling before you agree to it.
Exclusions, in a list. Line-voltage terminations, fire alarm panel connections, patching and painting, asbestos or lead abatement, permit filings where required, and anything the building or another trade is doing.
The permit determination. Whether the work sits inside the New York City exemption for signaling and communication wiring below 50 volts under Admin Code §28-105.4.7, or whether one of its four exceptions applies: life safety, hazardous location, intrinsically safe, or a point of connection interfacing with a control circuit that switches light, heat or power. That is our determination to make before work starts, not yours to discover afterwards.
Ownership and warranty. Who the cloud platform is registered to, who holds the admin account, warranty duration split between parts and labor, and what voids it.

If a competing bid does not contain those items, the two numbers you are comparing are not describing the same job.

Stage three

The install: working in an occupied building

Almost none of this work happens on a construction site. It happens in a building where people live, or where a business is trading, and the execution details matter as much as the terminations.

Hours and access. House rules in most managed New York buildings restrict contractor work to weekdays, commonly around 9 to 4 or 8 to 5, with no weekends or holidays. Service elevator windows are booked in advance and missing one costs a day. We plan the sequence around those constraints rather than treating them as an obstacle discovered on day one.

Protection and cleanup. Hallway floors and walls protected, elevator pads where the building requires them, common areas swept and cleared at the end of every day. Nobody should be able to tell from the lobby that work is in progress except by the notices.

Tenant-in-place phasing. On an intercom cutover the rule is that no apartment loses the ability to release the entrance door overnight. This is not politeness. A residential building without a working entry system can pick up a hazardous housing violation with a 30-day correction clock attached, and a job that drags across a weekend can create the very problem it was hired to fix. In practice that means the old system stays live until the new one is proven, floor by floor, and the changeover on any given riser happens inside a single day.

Labeling and firestopping as we go. Every cable labeled at both ends against a schedule, every penetration firestopped when it is made rather than in a panic before inspection. Labeling costs an hour; not labeling costs the next contractor two days and you pay for those.

Network hygiene. Cameras and door controllers go on their own segment with rules that let them reach the recorder and a time source and nothing else. No inbound port forwarding to a recorder or a camera, ever. That is how these devices end up indexed by scanners within hours and enrolled in a botnet. Remote access, where you want it, is by VPN or the manufacturer’s managed tunnel. Every default password is changed at commissioning.

Stage four

Handover: the part that is usually skipped

Handover is a scheduled appointment with you present, not an email saying the work is finished.

The functional test

Every door is released from every credential type it is supposed to accept. Every intercom station is called from the entrance and the release is operated from inside the apartment. Every camera is confirmed writing to the recorder, and we check the oldest recording on the drive, because that is the only honest way to prove the retention you were sold actually exists rather than the one on the specification sheet. On any electrically locked egress door, the fire alarm interface is physically tested with the fire alarm contractor: the alarm is activated, each affected lock is verified to release, and the doors are confirmed to stay unlocked until the panel is reset. That test is written down and dated.

The documentation

As-builts showing what went where and what feeds it. The labeling map, matching the labels physically on the cable. Device inventory with model and serial numbers, so a warranty claim in year two does not require a site visit to find out what is installed. The power supply schedule showing which output feeds which lock and, critically, which outputs drop on a fire alarm signal and which must not: the maglocks on stair doors have to release, the fail-secure strikes on fire-rated doors must not, and getting that selection wrong is simultaneously a code violation and a security hole.

The keys to your own system

Cloud platforms registered to your organization with your email as the owner account. Local systems with admin credentials handed over in writing and our access removed or, if you want us available for support, logged and revocable by you. Then a walkthrough of the three things a building actually has to do for itself: add a resident, revoke a lost fob, and pull footage for a specific date and time. If you cannot do those three unaided, the handover is not finished.

Your side

What we need from you to keep this moving

Every item here has stalled somebody’s job in this city. None of them takes more than a phone call to arrange.

Access to the unglamorous rooms. Riser closets, the basement equipment room, the electrical room, the roof, and the telecom or IDF closet. A survey that cannot see the riser produces a scope full of assumptions.
The super’s direct number. The superintendent is usually the only person who knows which panel actually feeds the lobby, where the abandoned cable goes, and which apartment floods every spring. Half an hour with them is worth a day of investigation.
Your certificate of insurance requirements in writing, up front. Exact entity names for additional insured, the endorsement wording, and who the certificate should be issued to. Getting this on day one instead of day twenty is the single biggest schedule saver on managed property.
House rules and work hours. Permitted hours, service elevator booking process, loading and parking arrangements, and whether an alteration agreement applies.
One decision-maker, and the approval calendar. If a board vote is needed, we need the meeting dates. A scope submitted three days after a board meeting waits a month for no technical reason at all.
Notice lead time for in-unit work. Where apartment stations are being replaced, tell us how much notice the building requires and who distributes it. Assume 10 to 15% of units will need a second or third attempt.
Anything on paper you already have. Old drawings, a previous contractor’s invoice, the make and model on the existing panel, or just a clear photograph of the label inside the amplifier cabinet. Any of these can shorten a survey.

Reality

The five things that actually move a schedule

Delays in this trade are rarely about labor. They are about approvals, discoveries and other people’s calendars, and all five of these are predictable enough to plan around.

The board cycle. Co-op and condo work runs under an alteration agreement: a contract with the corporation covering scope, schedule, insurance and the board’s right to say no. Four to eight weeks from submission to approval is normal, and the driver is usually meeting cadence rather than objection. Submit early, and submit a scope that answers the engineer’s questions before they are asked.
What is behind the wall. Opening a public hall wall in a pre-1960 building can trigger lead and asbestos protocols. Riser insulation that has gone brittle can fail as soon as it is disturbed. Both are named as allowances in the scope for exactly this reason.
Long-lead hardware. Specialty electric strikes, custom-engraved lobby directories and certain panels can run weeks. We identify the long pole at scope stage and, where it makes sense, order it against a deposit while approvals are still running.
The landmarked facade. On a landmarked or historic-district building, anything that changes the street elevation (a new entrance panel, a surface-mounted camera, a conduit run on the facade) is a design constraint before it is a technical one. It usually means recessing into the existing opening, working within the existing box, or finding an interior route instead.
Other trades. The electrician landing the line-voltage feed, the fire alarm contractor available for the joint release test, the elevator company for cab wiring and traveling cable work. These are scheduled, not assumed, and they are the reason a one-day install can sit for a week.

None of this is unusual and none of it is a reason to panic. It is a reason to start the paperwork before you start the drilling.

FAQ

Common questions

Do you charge for the survey, and what do we get from it?

A standard site survey anywhere in the service area costs nothing. We walk the building, open the riser and panels, meter what needs metering, photograph everything and give you a verbal read before we leave.

What you get in writing afterwards is the scope: hardware, cable, door-by-door schedule, price, exclusions and named allowances. Even if you never hire us, the survey answers the question that usually decides the budget: whether your existing riser can carry a modern system or whether it needs replacing.

What is not free is destructive or deep diagnostic investigation: opening finished walls, dismantling a riser, or a full point-to-point continuity test across a large legacy system. That is real labor and it is quoted separately before any of it happens.

Can you work while the building is occupied, or do we need to shut things down?

Occupied is the normal case and the whole method is built around it. Work happens inside the hours the house rules allow, common areas are protected and cleaned daily, and the sequence is planned so that services stay live.

On an intercom cutover the specific commitment is that no apartment goes overnight without the ability to release the entrance door. In practice that means running the old and new systems in parallel and changing over a riser inside a single working day, rather than pulling the old head end on Monday and commissioning the new one on Thursday.

The exception is in-unit work. Where apartment stations are being swapped we need access to each unit, notices go out in advance, and realistically 10 to 15% of units need a second or third attempt. That is the part of the schedule that slips, so it gets built in rather than promised away.

What does a fixed price actually cover, and what would trigger a change?

The fixed price covers everything described in the scope document: named hardware, named cable, the listed openings and stations, labor, testing and handover documentation. If we misjudged how long something takes, that is our problem, not a change order.

Three things can change the number. A named allowance being triggered: you already know the amount and the trigger, because both are written down before you sign. A genuine discovery outside anything reasonably foreseeable, which stops work and comes back to you in writing with the cost and the schedule effect before anything else happens. Or a change you ask for.

What will never happen is work being done first and invoiced afterwards on the basis that it was obviously necessary. If we did not tell you before, we do not bill it after.

Who deals with the managing agent and the board?

We do the technical side and you do the political side, and the split works best when it is explicit.

We provide the scope, the specification, method statements where the alteration agreement wants them, and answers to whatever the building’s engineer or architect asks. Where the agreement requires coverage documentation from every trade on site, send us the exact entity names and wording early and we will tell you plainly where that stands before a start date is set. We will attend a board meeting or a resident meeting if that helps, and we will write the plain-English version of the scope for shareholders who are being asked to approve a spend.

What we cannot do is set the agenda or accelerate a monthly meeting cycle. The most useful thing a board or agent can give us is the calendar, early, so the scope lands in a packet rather than three days after one closes.

Do you file permits, and will this need a DOB filing?

Making that determination is part of the scope, and it is stated in the document before work starts.

A lot of pure low-voltage work in New York City falls under the permit exemption for signaling, communication, alarm and data wiring designed to operate below 50 volts. But the exemption has four exceptions (life safety systems, hazardous locations, intrinsically safe systems, and any point of connection interfacing with a control circuit that switches light, heat or power), and the fourth catches access control work at the moment somebody lands a 120V feed for a lock supply. That part belongs to an electrician working under their own license, and where a filing is required it is filed under theirs.

Work that is part of a wider alteration, or that touches egress in a way requiring approval, may need a filing regardless. We flag that at scope stage rather than discovering it at inspection.

What happens after handover if something stops working?

You call, and because the documentation exists the first conversation is usually diagnostic rather than exploratory. Knowing which output on which power supply feeds the door that failed, and what the labeling map says about the cable, removes most of a service visit before anyone gets in a van.

Warranty terms are written into the scope: how long, parts versus labor, what is excluded, and what voids it. Manufacturer warranties on hardware sit alongside that and the model and serial numbers you were given at handover are what a claim needs.

Outside warranty we quote service work the same way as everything else, and we will tell you honestly when a repair is not worth doing: when the manufacturer is gone and parts do not exist, when riser insulation has broken down so far that new faults appear faster than we can clear them, or when annual service is costing more than the amortized cost of replacement.

Start with the survey. Decide after the scope.

There is no cost and no commitment until you have read a document with model numbers, a door schedule and a price in it. Then judge.

Request a quote (917) 353-9599

Sun to Thu 9am to 5pm · Fri 9am to 12pm · Sat closed