key cabinet organisation

[cledry]

Does anyone know of a good guide to setting up a new key cabinet for a master keyed system? I believe I saw one years ago from Lund and it outlined several ways to organise.

I have a customer who has a new system we designed and keyed that wants to have us organise it. This customer is becoming a PITA so I want to offer different ways to do the cabinet and then have them sign off before I start. In other words I want to do the job only once!

I could simply put keys in order from the chart, I could organise by floor etc.

There is a top level MK that works everything.
There are 5 floor master keys that work most things on their floor.
There are @ 30 suite master keys.
There are individual keys for specific doors.

[Evan]

Jim:

The best way that I have seen to organize key cabinets is to organize them by building first, floor second, then door number.

This is easy if there are architectural plans available, then you would only need to create a spreadsheet/chart which lists tag number in the key box as well as key symbol in the master system and the door number.

You would then create three copies of this chart: one by tag number order, one by door number order and one by key symbol order and have this in a small binder in the cabinet to serve as an index to the keys.

It is important to include the key symbol in the chart because it is inevitable that someone will get lazy down the line and issue one or both copies of the keys in the key box and the key symbol will need to be known to replace the given away keys.

~~ Evan

[ltdbjd]

I don't organize a key cabinet based upon a master key system, however we do have an active inventory of about 25,000 keys we store, track, manage, issue, replace, repair, etc. So I have some serious floor-to-ceiling built-in cabinets.

One thing we do is use a lot of color coding. We use many of the different color 1.25" aluminum key tags from Lucky Line. We also use tamper proof key rings with different color hubs from Morse Watchman. Depending on he product and application, each color has its own meaning within the hierarchy. For example, one color is for emergency keys, one color is highly restricted, one is restricted, one is general use, and one is for Keys that can be removed from the facility, etc.

If I were to set up a master key system with the same principals, I'd probably use colors to designated GGM's, GM's, SM's, etc. when I've done small scale commercial projects, I'd frequently use colored key blanks - either with the plastic covered bow, or the aluminum blanks.

We use HPC KeyTrail software. One of these days when money is no object (like that ever happens), I want to go to an automated bar code system for key management (tied into inventory control and repair history).

[cledry]

I think unless the cabinet is very secure one wouldn't want to colour code a small system such as the one I am working on with @ 500 changes. My thoughts on this are that if someone opened the cabinet and was faced with the majority of tags in one colour and a few in another and perhaps a couple in another a logical person would assume the colours with less representation would be the master keys or at the very least more important.

[ltdbjd]

Haha. I didn't consider that.

My key cabinet is in a heavily fortified and alarmed room with no access except for myself and a Key Control Officer, inside a secure building, on the grounds of a restricted, guarded, fenced, maximum security prison. But that's how many keys we manage; we have a full time person assigned to key control.

Never mind ..... M

[cledry]

Aluminum keys.

[ltdbjd]

They are pretty much the same as brass keys in terms of durability.

According to Tobias in Locks, Safes and Security, some of the aluminum alloys are stronger than brass. He cites one in particular that Silca uses for their aluminum keys.

That being said, I don't use them very frequently. But I have used the red ones to identify emergency keys.

[GWiens2001]

My concern with aluminum keys is that they can clog up the cutters on your machine.

Gordon

[cledry]

They are pretty much the same as brass keys in terms of durability.

According to Tobias in Locks, Safes and Security, some of the aluminum alloys are stronger than brass. He cites one in particular that Silca uses for their aluminum keys.

That being said, I don't use them very frequently. But I have used the red ones to identify emergency keys.

I try not to even use normal brass for MK systems. I try to always use nickle silver and the same with bottom pins. Costs a bit more but produces a better finished product IMO. I doubt Silca even makes them in the keyways I generally need. This week I am working with Schlage S145 and Corbin 59A1 on two MK jobs. Last week was Sargent HJ and a few common Schlage ones that Silca probably does offer.