OVERVIEW
Wesgroup (formerly including Parklane Homes and Bluetree Homes) is a real estate development company based in Vancouver, BC. They develop commercial and residential properties in the Lower Mainland. They own, develop, manage and lease over 60 commercial and mixed-use properties and won a Gold Nugget award for Best Mixed-Use Project for The Prescott.
THE GOAL
Before the official launch of SmartKey™ in 2009, many builders struggled with the complexity of the industry standard Construction Key (CK) and Realtor Key (RK) system in order to satisfy the many stakeholders on large residential high-rise and low-rise projects. Switching to the SmartKey™ system eliminated these concerns on projects and limited keying issues.
THE CHALLENGE
Utilizing standard CK and RK systems introduces unnecessary complexity into high-rise and low-rise multi-family projects. These issues can cause delays and introduce additional costs to the project that can be avoided.
Some of these risks include:
- Ensuring that all deadbolts tied to a particular home stayed with that home only so that the final home owner/tenant key would work when the home was turned over. This was often a problem when a door was deleted and deadbolts/handlesets were mixed up between homes.
- Ensuring no one used the RK or tenant key instead of the CK key during the construction phase, because this would trip the cylinder and lock out the trades and require an extensive and expensive resetting of the ‘lost ball’ CK system.
- The less secure nature of pin and tumbler cylinders with respect to lock picking and bumping
- The fact that, if a CK/trades key was lost or stolen, the entire site was compromised and would have to be re-keyed by a locksmith at great expense.
- If the final tenant keys were mislabeled, then often the whole home would need to be re-keyed by a locksmith (or often by us as part of an unnecessary service call).
THE SOLUTION
Wesgroup was introduced to the SmartKey™ system, including training for their on-site construction
team and site supervisors. All SmartKey™ keyed products could now be sent to site keyed to one
“construction key”, with as many trades keys, realtor/sales keys and final homeowner keys as desired, and
with no key control confusion.
As part of the training, Weiser provided the on-site team with reset cradles to use in case someone
accidentally re-keyed a unit incorrectly. This dropped the number of site service calls significantly and
limited disruptions to the construction timeline. In addition, Wesgroup understood that SmartKey™ could
be utilized with Baldwin Reserve products to offer as a premium front entry design while tying it with
Weiser products used in the interior package or other exterior deadbolts.
Once the new home owner is officially handed over the keys to their new home, a common fear is that
the feel someone else may have a copy of that key. In turn they call the locksmith and pay a bill. With
Smartkey™, the builder or customer care department can now re-key the lock in front of them and give a
sense of additional security that no one else has keys to their unit.
With all of these benefits to their business, Wesgroup adopted SmartKey™ on all of their new projects and
has never looked back
