AirAllow in a Leased Suite: What to Settle Before You Order
AirAllow sells well into tenant spaces because it does not ask anyone to rebuild the building. The controller is compact, it lands on standard locking hardware through a straightforward four-wire connection, and the phone replaces the card. That is genuinely useful in a Cumberland or Perimeter fit-out where the suite is yours and the base building is not. It also means most of the risk on the job sits in questions that have nothing to do with the product.
What the system consists of
The core piece is the SGS Compact Universal Controller, which drives the opening and holds the access logic. A Wi-Fi Cloud Connector brings the site online for remote features. Administration runs through a web portal. Credentials are deliberately mixed: the smartphone app, ID cards, keypad codes through a virtual keypad, and a link-based option that lets a visitor open a specific door without installing anything.
That last one is the feature tenants actually buy. Sending a contractor or an interview candidate a link that works for one afternoon is a different workflow from issuing a badge and chasing it down.
Five questions to answer before the purchase order
- Who owns the opening? Suite entry doors in a multi-tenant tower are often base-building hardware. Modifying them can require landlord approval and may have to be reversed at lease end. Interior doors inside your demised space are usually yours to change.
- What is in the frame right now? An electric strike, a magnetic lock, or nothing at all moves the scope more than the controller choice does. Find out before pricing.
- How does the door release in an alarm? Free egress and the fire alarm interface are code matters, not preferences. Any electrified opening on a means of egress has to be worked out with the authority having jurisdiction and the building’s fire alarm contractor.
- Whose wireless is it? In a leased suite the Wi-Fi is frequently managed by the landlord or a building service provider. Cloud features depend on that network staying reachable and on somebody being willing to hand over an SSID, a credential and a stable policy.
- What happens at lease end? Removal, restoration of the frame, and where the account and credential list go afterward. Sort this while the lease is still being negotiated.
How this plays out in metro Atlanta
Fit-outs around Cumberland and Perimeter tend to start after the space is leased and sometimes after it is partly occupied. A system that installs onto existing hardware and needs no panel room, no head-end and no dedicated closet fits that timeline. It is also easy to over-scope. A twelve-door suite with three exterior-facing openings, a server room, a file room and a run of private offices does not need identical treatment everywhere. Put the tighter control and the audit trail where the risk sits, and use codes or simple scheduling on the rest.
Production offices and post facilities supporting Atlanta’s stage work have a sharper version of the same problem: short leases, rotating crews, and a need to give people access for weeks rather than years. Time-limited and link-based credentials handle that without a badge printer or a card stock order.
Where the humidity comes in
Almost everything described here belongs indoors, and that is the right instinct. If part of the scope reaches a covered entry, a dock man-door or a rooftop mechanical door, treat it as a separate specification rather than an extension of the interior scope. Confirm the environmental rating of the exact parts going outside, and keep the electronics on the protected side of the opening wherever the hardware allows it.
At handover, ask for
- The portal account in the company’s name rather than an installer’s
- A written door list showing hardware type and release method per opening
- The network details the system depends on, including who administers that network
- A documented way back into the space when the internet is down
- A second named administrator
Access control that only one person knows how to administer is a problem waiting on that person’s vacation. Call KSEDCO at (888) 360-0035 to walk an AirAllow scope.