23 Oct 2008

Local sliding door modification will win more Australian business

A small modification to the electric lock on the UniSlide will mean more government business for Besam Australia.

A modification to the electromechanical lock on the Besam UniSlide is going to open up a great deal of government business for Besam Australia.  Last week, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) endorsed  the Besam Unislide with “CDC” locking as suitable for use in Secure Area applications.

“Our standard electromechanical lock alone did not meet the application of force testing requirements and was therefore not endorsed for use on high-security government buildings here,” explains Managing Director David Churchill. “The lock itself needed to be strengthened but also the way it was fixed into the beam on single door applications had to be adjusted.

This isn’t an issue in other parts of the world where the UniSlide’s electromechanical lock is used more as a back-up to a manual lock, but in the Australian market, building code regulations mean that manual locking is rarely used. Approximately 80% of the sliding door operators Besam Australia sells have electric locking.

David and his team had been working on a fix for quite some time, but the situation became critical about a year ago when a competitor producing a slider locally for Dorma realized that their electric lock was endorsed for use in secure area applications and Besam’s was not.

“Not only were they winning external doors because of it, but once they had the external door contract they had a strong argument for getting the internal doors as well,” David says. “Most customers, but especially government agencies, are keen to simplify these kinds of things as much as possible. It was tough to convince them to buy internal doors from us if regulations required them to buy their external sliders from a competitor.”

Following Besam Australia’s modification, the UniSlide with “CDC” locking not only met ASIO’s standard for the amount of force it had to withstand without breaking, it was almost twice as strong as it needed to be.

“The testing results and approval came back just last Friday, so this is the first week we’ve actually been able to offer it,” David says.  “I’m confident the news will be warmly received by Australian government agencies, who will really appreciate our ability to make a competitive bid.”