Automatic door service provider for any major brand
Most buildings do not choose an automatic door service provider. They inherit one, usually whoever installed the entrance, and they stay with them until something goes badly enough wrong to force a decision. That is how a lot of entrances end up neglected, and it is why we are willing to take over equipment we did not install.
This page covers two things. Why servicing an automatic door is not optional maintenance theatre, and how we take over doors from other brands when your current automatic door service provider is not working out.
What actually happens to an unserviced automatic door
An automatic entrance does not fail suddenly. It degrades, quietly, and then it fails at the worst possible moment, which is usually a trading day or a night shift.
Without an automatic door service provider looking at it, the mechanical path degrades first. Carriage wheels pick up grit, the track wears, and the leaf starts running with more resistance than the operator was set up for. The operator compensates by drawing more current, and it does this invisibly for months. By the time somebody notices the door sounds different, the drive has been working hard for a long time.
The safety path degrades differently and more dangerously. Sensor alignment drifts. Detection fields narrow. A safety beam that was commissioned to stop a closing leaf against a person standing in the threshold gradually stops seeing the edge of that zone. Nobody notices, because the door still opens and closes. It only reveals itself when somebody is caught, and that is not a maintenance problem any more, it is an incident.
Why an automatic door service provider matters more than the brand
Clients often ask their automatic door service provider which brand of automatic door is most reliable. It is the wrong question. Across the equipment we see, the difference between a well-maintained entrance and a neglected one dwarfs the difference between manufacturers.
A competently specified operator that is serviced on a sensible interval will outlast a superior operator that nobody has touched in four years. So the decision that actually determines what your entrance costs you over its life is not which unit you bought. It is which automatic door service provider looks after it, and whether they turn up.
That is also why we are relaxed about taking over equipment we did not supply. We are not trying to persuade you to rip out a functioning door to replace it with ours. If your existing operator is sound, the right advice is to maintain it properly, and we will tell you that even though it is the less profitable answer.
Taking over doors from other brands
As an independent automatic door service provider we service GEZE, dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, record and TORMAX automatic door systems, alongside our own MC-125 and MCW-100 units. We are an independent service provider. We are not an agent, distributor or authorised representative of any of those companies. We say that plainly because some suppliers imply an official relationship they do not have, and you are entitled to know exactly who you are dealing with.
What independence means in practice is that our advice is not shaped by a manufacturer’s sales target. When we tell you an operator is worth keeping, nobody upstream is unhappy about it.
How a takeover actually works
Changing automatic door service provider sounds disruptive. Done properly it is not, because the first visit is an assessment rather than a rescue.
As your automatic door service provider we start by surveying every entrance in the building and writing down what is actually there: make, model where it is legible, approximate age, condition of the mechanical path, condition of the safety path, and what has obviously been repaired before. A surprising number of buildings do not have this list, which is itself part of the problem.
Then we tell you which doors are fine, which need work now, and which are near enough to end of life that spending money on them is throwing it away. That report is the deliverable, and you are entitled to take it and do nothing. We would rather give you an honest assessment and lose the contract than win it on a scare.
Where we do take over, we set a service interval per entrance rather than one interval for the building. A high-cycle main entrance and a low-cycle side door are different machines in practice, and putting them on the same schedule either wastes your money or produces a failure.
The spares question, which decides everything
The honest constraint in taking over another brand is spares, and any automatic door service provider who does not raise it with you is not being straight.
For our own MC-125 and MCW-100 units we hold spares in Johannesburg and a fault is usually a same-visit fix in Gauteng. For third-party equipment it depends on the part. Common wear items across the major brands are widely available and we hold or source them quickly. Proprietary control boards are the difficulty, because those are controlled by the manufacturer and availability is outside our hands.
So the assessment tells you something useful about your own risk. If a critical entrance runs on an operator whose control board is hard to obtain, that is a business continuity issue worth knowing about before the board fails, not after. Sometimes the right answer genuinely is to plan a replacement. Sometimes it is to hold a spare board on site. Either way it should be a decision rather than a surprise.
What we do not do
As an automatic door service provider we do not do roller shutter doors. We do not supply, fit, retrofit or service door closers, and we do not make an exception for a building where we service everything else. Pedestrian automatic entrances are the whole of what we do, and we would rather be narrow and good than broad and vague.
We also do not issue compliance certificates we are not qualified to issue. Where an entrance sits on an escape route or forms part of a fire strategy, the responsible party is your fire consultant, and we give them the technical detail they need rather than signing something ourselves.
Response, honestly stated
Our automatic door service provider breakdown line on 010 412 0062 is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Same-day attendance is a Gauteng commitment. Outside Gauteng we respond as fast as distance allows and we will tell you what that realistically means for your site rather than quoting a number we cannot hold to.
This is the point where a lot of service proposals get vague, and vagueness is how facilities managers end up holding a contract that promises nothing enforceable. Ask any prospective automatic door service provider, including us, to put the response commitment in writing with the geography attached to it.
How often should an automatic door be serviced?
There is no single correct interval, and an automatic door service provider who quotes you one without asking about your building is guessing.
Any automatic door service provider should set the interval from cycles and environment. A supermarket entrance opening thousands of times a day in a dusty location is a different machine from an office side door opening two hundred times a day in a clean interior, even if the operator model is identical. Cycle count drives mechanical wear; environment drives contamination; and the two together set how often somebody needs to be looking at it.
What we do is set the interval per entrance at the assessment, write it down with the reasoning, and revisit it once we have seen how that specific door actually behaves. A schedule that never changes after year one was never based on the building.
Servicing and the safety case
The part of servicing that clients under-value most is the safety verification, because it produces no visible improvement. The door worked before the visit and it works after it.
What has changed is that somebody has confirmed the detection fields still cover the zones they were commissioned to cover, that the reversal behaviour still triggers where it should, and that the force settings have not drifted. On an entrance used by elderly people, children, or anyone moving a trolley or a bed, that verification is the difference between a door and a hazard.
It is also the part that leaves a record. If an incident ever does occur at an entrance, the question asked afterwards is what regime of inspection was in place. A service history from a named automatic door service provider, with dated safety checks, is a materially different position to be in than no records at all.
What a service visit actually includes
Facilities managers are right to be sceptical about service visits, because a weak automatic door service provider can produce a signed sheet without doing much. So here is what a visit should contain, whether you use us or somebody else.
The mechanical check covers the track, the carriage wheels, the belt or drive, the leaf suspension and the bottom guides. Wear here is measurable, not a matter of opinion, and a competent automatic door service provider will tell you what they measured rather than that it looked fine.
The safety check covers every sensor on the entrance: the activation sensors, the presence or safety sensors that hold the leaf open while somebody is in the threshold, and the reversal behaviour on obstruction. Each has a commissioned zone and each drifts. Verifying them is the single most valuable thing that happens during the visit.
The control check covers the settings themselves, compared against the commissioning baseline. Opening speed, closing speed, hold-open time and force settings all get adjusted over the years, often by well-meaning people, and an entrance can drift a long way from its commissioned state without anybody deciding to change it.
The record is the last part, and it is the part that matters when something goes wrong. Dated, itemised, naming what was checked and what was adjusted.
The business case for servicing
The argument for a service agreement is usually made emotionally, as a safety warning. The stronger argument is financial, and any automatic door service provider should be able to make it without theatrics.
An automatic entrance that fails without warning costs more than the repair. It costs the emergency call-out premium, it costs the door being propped open or manned while it waits, and on a retail or hospitality site it costs whatever an unusable main entrance costs on a trading day. Planned maintenance converts an unpredictable, expensive event into a predictable, cheaper one.
It also extends the asset. An operator whose mechanical path is kept clean and correctly tensioned is not fighting itself every cycle. The drive lasts longer, because it was never quietly overloaded for two years by a leaf that had become stiff.
Multi-site portfolios
Where a client has entrances across several buildings, the usual state we find is inconsistency: three different contractors, three different standards of record-keeping and no single view of what is installed anywhere.
Consolidating onto one automatic door service provider is worth doing mainly for the asset register, not for the small commercial saving. Once every entrance across the portfolio is listed with its make, model, age, duty and condition, replacement can be planned and budgeted instead of reacting to failures one at a time.
We are happy to do that assessment across a portfolio as a piece of work in its own right, with no obligation to award us the maintenance afterwards. The register is useful to you regardless of who ends up as your automatic door service provider.
Automatic door service provider: the short version
Servicing is not optional upkeep, and choosing an automatic door service provider is not a formality. It protects the mechanical life of the operator and, more importantly, it keeps the safety systems doing what they were commissioned to do.
We take over automatic doors from other brands, including GEZE, dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, record and TORMAX, as an independent automatic door service provider and not as anyone’s agent. The first visit is an honest written assessment of every entrance in the building, and you are free to act on it or not.
We hold spares for our own MC-125 and MCW-100 units in Johannesburg. On third-party equipment we will tell you straight where proprietary parts create a risk you should plan around. Our line runs 24/7 on 010 412 0062, with same-day attendance committed in Gauteng.
Choosing between us and your incumbent
If you already have an automatic door service provider and you are only mildly dissatisfied, the honest advice is usually to fix the relationship before changing it. Ask for the last three service records. Ask what the commissioned settings on your main entrance are. Ask what the response commitment is in writing, with geography attached.
A competent automatic door service provider can answer all three in a day. If yours cannot produce service records or does not know the commissioning baseline for your busiest door, that tells you what the visits have actually consisted of.
Where we are genuinely a better fit is buildings running mixed equipment that nobody wants to own, and buildings where the safety verification has quietly stopped happening. Where we are not a better fit is a building whose incumbent automatic door service provider is doing the work properly and simply costs a little more than the cheapest quote.
Frequently asked
Will you service a door you did not install?
Yes, that is much of what we do. We take over GEZE, dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, record and TORMAX equipment as an independent automatic door service provider. We are not an agent, distributor or authorised representative of any of those manufacturers.
Will you tell me to replace a door that does not need replacing?
No. If your existing operator is sound, the correct advice is to maintain it, and that is the advice you will get even though it earns us less. The first visit is an assessment and you are entitled to take the report and do nothing with it.
What if parts for my brand are hard to get?
We will say so before you sign anything. Common wear items across the major brands are obtainable. Proprietary control boards are the real constraint and availability sits with the manufacturer, not with us. Knowing which of your entrances carries that risk is one of the more useful outputs of the assessment.
How quickly do you respond to a breakdown?
The line on 010 412 0062 is answered around the clock. Same-day attendance is a commitment we make in Gauteng. Elsewhere we respond as fast as the distance allows and we will state what that means for your site in writing rather than quote a number we cannot hold.
Do you service door closers or roller shutters?
No to both. We do not supply, fit, retrofit or service door closers, and we do not work on roller shutter doors. Pedestrian automatic entrances are the whole of our business.
Ask us to assess your entrances
If you are not sure when your automatic doors were last properly serviced, that is usually the answer in itself. Send us the building, the number of entrances and roughly what equipment is in them, and we will arrange an assessment.
Call 010 412 0062 or use the request a quote form. Our automatic door servicing page covers our own service scope, the service level agreement page explains how agreements are structured, and spare parts covers what we hold. Guidance on powered pedestrian doors is published by the South African Bureau of Standards.