Building Resilient Schools: Design Practices that Enhance Safety, Security, and Longevity

This podcast explores the critical role of door hardware and security solutions in creating safer and more resilient educational environments. Through real-world insights and design strategies, participants will examine how codes, standards, and best practices influence decisions that impact occupant safety, emergency response, long-term durability, and liability. The discussion also highlights sustainability, affordability, and the evolving landscape of school safety innovation. By the end, attendees will have a deeper understanding of how design professionals can contribute to effective, compliant, and enduring solutions that protect students, educators, and communities.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the SpecShaman podcast, the show that explores the world of building product manufacturers, architects and engineers, sustainable design and technology and trends. We engage in thought provoking discussions with renowned experts, industry pioneers, and visionaries who are making a significant impact in the construction industry. Join us as we explore groundbreaking ideas, revolutionary concepts, and the latest advancements shaping the built environment.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode. Let's get started. Welcome to the SpecShaman podcast.

I'm your host, Megan Vipund, and today we're discussing a critical topic that impacts communities everywhere, safety and security in schools. We're joined today by Brandon Faber, Jennifer Farrell, and Todd Neely. Each brings deep expertise in safety design, building codes, and the evolving role of hardware in protecting students and educators.

Before we get started, could each of you give a quick introduction? Tell us how you came to be in this part of the industry. Sure, I'll go ahead and start. Like you mentioned, my name is Brandon Faber.

I'm actually kind of new to the door hardware industry, if you will. I've been with TownSteel for about a couple of years now, leading our school safety division. And before that, I spent about 15 years as a police officer and as a school resource officer, more particularly.

So bring a little bit of that experience and real world working in schools to TownSteel and to the door hardware industry as a whole. I guess I'll go next. I'm Jennifer Farrell.

I also, just like Brandon, am a retired law enforcement officer. I retired last April and joined TownSteel last September. I also have a background in school safety.

I was a juvenile officer. I taught there for many years. Before I retired, I was a detective sergeant working directly with juvenile cases.

And then I found my way to TownSteel where we're able to still make a difference in school safety. Hi, I'm Todd Neely with TownSteel. I initially started out my career out of school in law enforcement and then through a series of events made it into the door hardware industry.

And I got really interested in doing things to improve school safety and security, primarily because I saw a void in the marketplace for products that met the need. Let's begin by exploring the real world safety concerns that schools face today. Brandon, what are the most pressing safety and security challenges that schools face regarding classroom and interior doors? Throughout my travels to the country, talking to schools all over the place, what I really see the most, and it's honestly quite one of the easiest things to mitigate, is the inability for teachers and students or any occupant really to be able to quickly lock a door in an emergency situation.

And why do I say that? If we go back many years before, it used to be a situation where teachers and administrators could really only have the ability to lock their door by going out in the hallway, presenting a key into the keyway, locking it, and then going back in the room and closing the door. And we've seen through numerous unfortunate tragedies that that is a really poor way to be able to lock a classroom in a real quick fashion that presents the occupants in the room a challenge to get to safety. And it actually puts the teacher in a situation where they have to present themselves in the area of danger to be able to lock and close that door.

So, I would say that inability to do that from the inside has been a huge problem that I've seen. Thankfully, I have seen a really solid effort in the industry, both for door hardware manufacturers and school safety professionals, of changing that by putting different kinds of functions locks on the doors. So, I'm happy to see that that's taken place throughout the country.

Another thing is providing free egress. Another thing we see a lot of times is schools being pitched using barricade devices to secure their doors quickly. And that presents a whole different level of problem I think we're going to probably talk about later as the questions progress.

So, I would say that that's a huge problem is making sure that we provide free egress and a method of escape when it needs to be there for the occupants in that room, because it might not always be the situation where locking down and staying in one place is the best solution. So, if you've got a barricaded door, it makes it a challenge for people to get out in a hurry. Vision panels and sidelight glass that are adjacent to the door hardware makes it really simple for people with bad intentions to gain access to the room, even when the door is closed and locked.

So, kind of rethinking materials and position on vision panels and sidelight glass is something that I see that really needs to take place. Probably the most pressing issue is the human element in all of this. I tell people all the time that we can go into schools and we can invest all the money that we want to in the world and all these fancy gizmos and upgraded security technology, but all it takes is for people to not be going along with safety protocols or propping a door or many other things.

That's a big deal. So, promoting a culture of safety really is crucial in all of this. And then it boils down to a lot of times cost.

Schools don't have a ton of money in their budget for security upgrades. Their budgets are not unlimited, right? In fact, they're the exact opposite. They're very limited.

So, how can we in the industry provide solutions to these schools that are cost effective and really solid options for them that can fit within their budget? Yes, absolutely. A lot of considerations. Jen, how do current door hardware solutions impact emergency response times for first responders? That's a good question.

And as Brandon had just mentioned, providing free egress for the occupants within a classroom or inside of a building is crucial when there's an emergency situation. We don't always have a lockdown situation where students need to get out. However, first responders have to be able to get in.

So, school safety wants that unique balance. We want the schools to be a fortress. We want them to be completely safe.

But at the same time, we need to be able to gain entry. So, we need our first responders, in my belief, they should have a master key or an access card to gain entry to that building. Again, Brandon started to talk a little bit briefly about the type of door hardware that's installed.

It needs to be simple and it needs to be easy to use. First responders don't have time to fiddle with different operations of how to access a door. They need to be able to get in and they need to be able to get out.

Like I said, the door should be easy to operate. Having that clear indication whether the door is locked or unlocked makes it simple and fast. First responders are multitasking in so many ways in that emergency response.

And trying to worry about whether the door is locked or unlocked shouldn't be one of them. Todd, why are visual lock indicators so critical in school safety design? I think they're critical for school safety and design just because of the fact that they indicate the status of the lock. So, teachers and staff inside of classrooms along with students can simply look over at the door opening and visually see if they're behind a closed and locked door or not.

Which I think enhances the learning environment if kids feel safe. And in the event that something happens catastrophically in a school with an intruder, and law enforcement or other emergency services need to respond, they can do the same. They can simply look at the door opening and tell if they're approaching a locked door or an unlocked door.

I think it also helps out with school districts that do daily checks looking at lock status instead of having to go up and touch each handle and possibly make noise in doing so. They can simply look at the door and check off if it's locked or not. And in the event of emergency, it helps guide people to a place of refuge instead of running to doors to check and see if they're open so they can get into a safer place.

They can simply see an opening that may be unlocked that provides them an area of refuge. How does human error factor into door locking systems? And what design strategies can help minimize that? I think human error is one of the biggest issues that we face on a regular basis in school safety. People want to do things that are convenient as opposed to looking necessarily at things that are secure.

And there's a trade-off there. So the more security that we can offer in an opening, the less convenient it is for people to use it. So when we see those high secure areas, we also see things going on with door propping and using secondary stops to hold doors open.

We see magnets placed over strikes so that latch bolts can't engage. We run into occasions with people unknowingly leaving their doors unlocked or teaching with doors open during class. And we have to look at things from a design standpoint where we can make it convenient while being secure.

And I think having indicators on locks helps bridge that gap. Jen, what role should design professionals play in creating a safer school environment? So, you know, I was saying before how, you know, we have that unique balance with school safety. Design professionals want a school to be shaped and feel very open and allow students to meander wherever and kind of have like a home environment.

However, we do need it to be kind of like a fortress at the same time. So there's that balancing act that they really have to play when designing a school and allowing that emergency response, you know, making sure that there's clear sight, visual sight lines for first responders and making it still look natural so that, you know, students don't feel like they're in that fortress. You know, we need secure entry vestibules.

That's a balancing act too because you have the schools that want it to look pretty and be able to function in a certain way. You know, maybe they want to sell cookies during lunch or what have you. But, you know, we need a secure entry vestibule where we have places for parents to be brought to a single entry point and be able to make sure that our students are safe by the person that's there has the reason to be there.

Making sure our door hardware is durable and it's going to withstand the daily use. You know, so you want something that's made of a good material, being able to provide that lockdown capability during the emergency. You also need to be able to have that free egress all the time.

So making sure that there aren't barricade devices. And then again, like I said, making sure that there's that free and flexible space so students feel comfortable where they are, but they're able to make sure that they lock down quickly when they need to. Brandon, how do school safety standards like PASS, Partner Alliance for Safer Schools, how do they influence design decisions? Sure.

So PASS is the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools and actually I'm honored to be able to serve on their technical committee for that organization. What the biggest thing that I think PASS does for designers is it gives a voice from credible subject matter experts in the industry on what actually works in the real world. What are people who are actually in the schools consulting on school safety or working in school safety in the buildings or designing and manufacturing products that fit within those guidelines? What actually works? What are the schools actually like to see? What's going to help mitigate some of the unfortunate tragedies in the future? And PASS takes those voices and puts those in one place for design professionals to take a quick look and kind of have a roadmap on how to design the building from an architectural standpoint or for door hardware specifications, what works, what doesn't work.

So I think that's huge, really, because it really does provide a roadmap. And it kind of guides vendors and manufacturers as well into investing in designs and engineering that really truly meets the needs of schools based on that input from those credible sources, right? So that provides solutions to schools from the designer based on their specs or whatever the case may be that are actually going to work in their buildings. And then also that helps with future-proofing and scalability, if you will, because we talked about before that schools do not have unlimited budgets, right? So when they invest in something, it would be nice if it's future-proof so we know that whatever we're spending the money on is going to work now, it's going to work in the future.

And if we have to add on some components to it in the future or add other systems to interoperate with them, it has that capability. And I think that PASS does a great job putting all that stuff into one place. And so not only is it helpful for the people in the schools, it's helpful for the people that are designing and building for the schools as well.

Jen, what lessons have been learned from real-world school safety incidents that design professionals should keep in mind? A lot of unfortunate incidences that happen, and they're unfortunately happening more and more frequently in schools and around the country. We see it every day on the news. So as these events happen, we're able to learn something from them, unfortunately, but fortunately.

So, you know, like I said before, the secure vestibules, allowing that controlled entry and, you know, creating that one-point, single-point entry for students to come through or staff to come through or parents to come through. It gives everybody a screening area. Classroom hardware, making sure that the teachers don't have to step back out into the hallway, like Brandon said, to expose themselves to the danger, be able to look across the room and see that their classroom is locked or unlocked, and that gives them that little bit of ease of mind that, you know, they're in a secure space.

But it still allows the first responders to, you know, open the door and know which room is open or closed when they walk down that hallway. You know, in a fire situation, being able to have free egress and clear egress is important. You know, we can't have the hallways piled with boxes.

We can't have barricade devices on the doors. The first responders need to be able to move clear and efficiently and be able to move fast, and you can't do that when you have cluttered hallways. You know, being able to compartmentalize areas with fire-rated doors and hardware that meets code.

You know, you have to have the doors closed. You can't have doors be able to stay open during a fire situation. You want to be able to contain that situation to one specific area.

And like I said before earlier about the design factors, you know, you don't want that school to look like a fortress or a prison to the students. But unfortunately, we do have to give some physical layer of security, and as Brandon had said, PASS gives those guidelines. The design factors and overall first responders, the design architects and security consultants along with us as manufacturers have all, I think, done a pretty good job of working together, you know, to try to learn from some of those incidents that have happened and design some products and things to be able to assist the schools with their needs to fix some of the issues that we've had.

Mm-hmm. A lot of choices there when it comes to design and hardware that can directly affect the protection of students, staff, and all the teachers and educators. Yeah, absolutely.

Now let's take a look at the standards and codes that shape these decisions. Todd, what building codes and standards apply specifically to classroom door hardware and security? Surprisingly, there's really not very many. The primary thing that we see from a code standpoint that applies across the United States is the case of fire-rated doors.

So any doors that are fire-rated in classrooms and schools need to be self-closing and self-latching. But outside of that, there's really not a national code or standard specifically for classroom doors. Some states have started to mandate that classroom doors be closed and locked when students are in the room.

We see some states started to require that they're using storeroom locks, and other states are requiring that locks on doors to classrooms have to be able to be locked from the inside of the room without the use of a key or any other special tool. How do ANSI, BHMA, Grade 1 certifications, and UL fire ratings, how do those ensure building occupant safety? When it comes to the fire rating, there's very stringent tests that have to be conducted on the doors and the frames and the hardware that go into the openings, including a fire test where they actually burn that product. And the products being tested have to withstand all the requirements and guidelines of the test.

So in the case of door hardware, that may be fire-rated hardware that's withstood a three-hour burn test and then gone through a hose stream test afterwards. So that gives some assurance that in a fire condition, the integrity of that opening is going to remain intact while giving time for the fire department to get there and do their job. I think when you look at BHMA and ANSI standards, those standards create a minimum guideline for quality because of the testing process that products need to go through.

And it's pretty important for schools that they use the highest grade hardware that they possibly can and lean towards using Grade 1 products on any openings that are going to be used by students and not skimp on those openings by trying to save a little bit of money going with a lesser grade product. Free egress is something that you guys have mentioned a couple of times now. Jen, why is free egress such an essential principle in safe door design? Yeah, we've mentioned it quite a bit, I guess, right? So free egress is the ability to be able to exit a door at any time without having to unlock it with a key, a special tool, or having some gadget or knowledge of how to open that door.

You shouldn't have to move things out of the way. You should be able to just pull the door handle and push the panic bar and be able to exit. So, you know, that's not just a principle for safe door design.

It's a code requirement. It's life safety necessity. It's, you know, students and staff need to be able to exit at any time.

You know, whether it's a fire, you need to be able to evacuate safely to be able to save lives. That's proven over and over again. They have to be in compliant with the life and fire safety codes.

So you've got to be able to exit a classroom freely, you know, with that free egress, open it and be able to exit. The barricaded and restricted doors, you know, we've seen, you know, we were talking about different life lessons from previous incidences. So, you know, you want to be able to prevent that entrapment with that free egress and not have a barricaded or restricted door.

Doors can't be chained or locked shut. They have to be able, again, to allow that free egress. Being able to keep the door locked at all times is probably one of the biggest safety factors that, you know, is challenging for everyone.

Staff want their doors open. Students want their doors open. You know, manufacturers and law enforcement professionals like ourselves want the door closed and locked at all times because that's going to keep you safe and secure within that space.

But it's a balancing act. You know, we have to balance the security aspect with safety with, again, that design principle. And I think, you know, making sure that that door can exit at any time is probably the number one.

Brandon, can you explain the risks associated with barricade devices in school environments? Sure. And that gets back into, like we've mentioned, the ability for free egress time and time again on this podcast so far. You know, PASS actually has gone so far as to put out a white paper and some resources and our statement on why barricade devices are a bad idea in schools.

And one of the biggest takeaways from that is there has yet to be a classroom lock that has been breached during an active shooter or active assailant situation in the country. It's never happened. So let's start with that they're unnecessary.

But also getting back into some of the code conversation that we had, they violate life safety and fire code and ADA codes as well. We have to be able to have the occupants of any room be able to get out in an emergency situation. So whether that be a fire, a gas leak, some kind of weather event where they need to get out of that room, whatever the case may be, when you have a barricade device on the door, it prevents you from doing that.

Another thing is it blocks access for first responders. There have actually been at least one that I can think of off the top of my head, a situation where there was an assailant that barricaded himself into a classroom and did some really terrible things. Well, it took first responders having to physically breach the door to get in there to stop the problem from happening.

Once again, a barricade device would slow down or stop first responders from being able to get into the room in an emergency situation when they need to. Another thing in a school setting specifically is let's talk about misuse of a barricade device by a student that's got some bad intentions, right? I've been working with a school district out in the East Coast where they've come to me with a request for a specific kind of classroom door function because they have had incidents of some of their students perpetrating some crimes on some other students by being able to barricade the door. People haven't been able to get in to stop that situation from happening.

So that's another thing to take into consideration when we're talking about barricade devices. And training to use them. So the human body does some pretty crazy things when it's under a tremendous amount of stress.

Your fine motor skills go out the window. Your cognitive ability becomes fuzzy. So in a situation where you have to secure a door, let's say, in our situation for our conversation, we want it to be easy and intuitive, something that you do on a regular basis.

So how often do we train on deploying one of these barricade devices, how to put it in correctly to make sure that it does work? So those are a lot of the things that are really, really terrible ideas for having barricade devices in school. And like I said to begin with, they're unnecessary. And, Todd, what are the best practices for balancing fire safety with security in school doors? School doors really should always be locked from the inside of the classroom.

And at the same time, they need to allow free egress. So traditionally, school doors and classroom doors were locked with a classroom function lock, which years ago was a great idea. The downside of a classroom function lock is that you have to go outside of the classroom into the hallway to use a key to lock the door, which is really not the ideal situation, especially if you have an active shooter in the building.

That's not anything that we ever want to see happen anymore. Some things that have happened in the industry over the years to try to increase the security in classrooms by using barricade devices or secondary locking devices on classroom doors. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, but they pose a whole bunch of other problems and threats.

The only way that a barricade or secondary device is useful is if it's easily deployed and it's right there by the opening. And we're seeing that school shooters are studying previous shootings to get ideas on how to create more damage. So as they see those products in use, they learn how to use them.

And a deployable barricade product to keep the bad guy out will also keep everybody else from being able to get out of the room. If a shooter deploys one of those devices inside the room. And if we look at things statistically on what's gone on over the past several years, on average there's somewhere around 23 school shootings that happen a year over the last 25 years.

In that same period, there's an average of 650 fires in schools. So we have to consider safety and security together because if there's a fire inside a classroom where there is a secondary device used, it may keep people from being able to get out of that classroom. And it certainly keeps first responders in any situation from easily being able to get into the rooms.

So I think the primary balance is to use fire rated hardware. That's a great one. That's lockable from the inside of the classroom that provides free egress and provides a visual indication of the lock status.

Brandon, are there emerging standards for school security hardware that design professionals should anticipate? Absolutely. And actually, since we've started planning about our conversation here, those anticipations have come to fruition. Recently, PASS has released their seventh revision of the guidelines, and ACES, which is ACES International, has actually very recently put out their school security standards.

In both of those organizations and documents, specific to door hardware, one of the biggest takeaways I want, especially folks who are writing specs for door hardware, to really pay attention, both of these organizations have come out and said, you know, the leading recommendation for classroom door hardware is that lock should have the ability to be locked by anyone inside the room without the use of a key or an additional device. So think the traditional classroom intruder function in our world. That means you have to use a key to lock it and unlock it from the outside, as well as a key to lock it or unlock it from the inside.

So the days of that being a recommended function on a door lock are gone. So I would really hardly press our spec writers to take that into consideration when they're writing specs for their projects. And another thing specific to door hardware is, once again, both of these organizations have come to the same recommendation, is that all locks on classroom door should have a visual indicator so the condition of the lock is visible to the room occupants.

On the inside, at minimum. Obviously, we've laid out some reasons that the three of us believe that you should be able to see the condition of the door from the outside as well. But at bare minimum, the people on the inside, based on leading practices and guidelines, the recommendations from probably the leading voices in the industry, recommend those two things.

And I would really press our spec writers to keep that in mind. Of course, it's not just about meeting codes. Schools and design professionals are thinking long term.

So that brings us to sustainability and longevity. And in any public facility, especially schools, products really need to last for decades. Jen, what role does material selection play in ensuring product longevity and safety? Like you just said, you know, the material needs to last.

Like Brandon mentioned earlier, you know, schools don't have a heavy budget. In fact, most schools have a very low budget when it comes to the aesthetics of the school and maintaining the products of door hardware and doors and floors and anything like that. So when it comes to door hardware specifically, because that's kind of what we're talking about here, door hardware really needs to be durable, right? It needs to be able to have, be able to sustain heavy use.

In the field, the stainless steel metals are probably one of the most durable over any of the other metals that are out there. It's also, it can withstand, you know, many different factors. You know, it can withstand the light and the sun.

It can withstand tampering with it or, you know, forced entry, allowing them to be able to keep that door secure if need be. You know, the intruders or students try to manipulate and break the locks. So, you know, using a strong material like stainless steel is probably going to be something that, you know, design professionals and, you know, the spec writer should really look at.

You want to be able to make sure that the locks can't be tampered with. You know, students sticking pencils in the locks and tampering with the device mechanisms to make them not stay locked or keeping the doors open. They have to have some sort of fire and life safety compliance as well.

You want to make sure it meets those expectations. And back to that environmental factor that I was just talking about, corrosion. You know, so you want to make sure that when you're looking at certain places and, you know, we all live in different parts of the country, so we all have different environmental factors.

The high humidity and the climate, you know, down in Florida, they have a lot of rain and the hurricanes are corrosion resistant with the salt. You want to make sure that the product is going to be able to sustain and be resistant to some of those factors as well. And overall, like we talked about with the cost, you know, the aesthetics and the design factor, you know, something that looks pretty today may not be pretty tomorrow or that's trendy.

But some of those specialized finishes cost a lot of money. And in 10 years, they're going to cost even more money. So, you know, you want to go with something that's going to keep the cost down.

And stainless steel is one of those, you know, some of those other trendy metals, you know, your brass, your zinc, your die cast alloys, your plastics in a fire rating situation are going to melt. So you have to think of all of those different factors when you're picking up the material. You can't just look at a catalog and say, hey, I want that one.

It doesn't really work that way. So what about product warranties? Why are those important for schools and design professionals when considering the long term value? So, again, like I was just saying, you know, the product needs to be able to last. You need to be able to have that reliability, the cost control, the compliance factor, the maintenance, everything like I just said.

You want to find a product that's going to have a warranty that is a promise to repair or replace the hardware when it fails. You know, not everything's perfect. Sometimes things break.

And without that warranty, it's going to cost the school district more money. And, again, like we've been saying, they don't have the money in their budget. So when you look at things that are trendy and you look at things that are, like, you know, shiny and new in certain aspects doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, it's going to be able to be replaced, you know, with a warranty.

You may not have a warranty on that product. You may have to purchase a whole new one. So, you know, you want to look for a product that has a good warranty.

Ten years or more would be ideal. And the warranty protects everyone. You know, it protects the students.

When the door fails, they can get another one relatively quickly. You know, and overall, it's just you want to look for something that's definitely going to last. Todd, what strategies can be used to ensure school security hardware remains effective for decades? Well, first and foremost, I would recommend the use, only the use of grade one certified products.

Proper maintenance needs to be conducted as suggested by whoever the hardware manufacturer is to make sure that that product stays in good working order. And repairs or replacements should be made immediately if there's damage that's found on any of those products. Now let's move into design solutions, best practices.

This is really where the design professionals are going to make their mark. Brandon, what makes ligature resistant hardware an important design consideration in behavioral health and educational facilities? Sure. Obviously, when we're talking about ligature resistant hardware, we're talking about putting devices on the doors that remove or severely mitigate the ability for someone to use them as anchor points for strangulation.

It's never an easy topic to talk about. But I think it's important to be kind of direct on on what our anybody's ligature resistant hardware does. It helps prevent people from self-harm.

Right. And the condition of the population of the folks that are in some of these facilities, we want to make sure that we're providing products and that architects and design professionals are installing that helping people take away that take away the instance where they can do something like that to themselves. So we want to help them heal.

Right. So most of the time, folks are in these in these facilities trying to get better. And we want to make sure that we provide products that that help them do that.

Right. In schools specifically, anecdotally, from my time in the schools as an SRO. And since, you know, I've left the PD and started doing this, it seems like there is a much more, much larger population of students with some pretty significant mental health needs and behavioral development needs.

So you're seeing the implementation of calm down rooms, things like that. Well, we want to make sure that we're providing hardware to go on those doors for those call rooms. And in this example that take away the ability for them to for there to be any kind of situation where they could strangle themselves with it.

And then to be quite honest with you, getting into legal liability and regulatory agencies. Right. A lot of what we do in design and manufacturing and engineering is providing things to people and facilities that help them avoid legal liability.

Right. So we want to make sure that our products live up to the accreditation processes from leading organizations. And then the recognized standards of care, especially throughout the mental health facility industry.

So it's a really important topic and it's something that gets overlooked a lot. So we want the design professionals to be implementing these literature resistant hardware solutions in the right places at the right times. Now, how can design professionals incorporate retrofitable security solutions into existing school buildings? I'm sure that that's actually a pretty easy one.

You need to explore manufacturers that actually offer products that are specifically designed to retrofit doors. Right. Because what you see a lot of the times is once you put a certain kind of hardware on a door, you're you're kind of locked into using that exact kind of hardware for the life of the door.

Otherwise, you have to do a lot of modification or you have to replace the door altogether. Right. There are manufacturers out there that provide solutions to retrofit the existing stuff that you have on your doors to accommodate completely different designs or completely different functions, different manufacturers.

So the biggest thing is just keep an open mind and look around for manufacturers to do that kind of thing. And as far as like other kinds of security products, not necessarily specifically for door hardware, explore systems and solutions that employ like open architecture for software and things like that and products that can easily integrate with other widely used platforms. And that's pretty easy thing to do.

You just got to kind of keep your mind open and then look for those things. Jen, what factors should designers evaluate when selecting lock hardware for high use environments? First and foremost, I think, you know, your design raters and your spec raters really need to listen to their end users and their facility directors when they're looking to design any of their environments. And specifically, they're the lock hardware.

You know, I've talked to many facility directors that say, you know, I want it to be this, but then it becomes this and it's not compliant and doesn't work with this. You know, so they really need to listen to them first and foremost and then build around products that are durable, safe and reliable. Like we've been saying, you know, schools are under constant daily operation.

These classrooms are getting a lot of use every day. So, you know, they need to look for hardware that can withstand that as well as be, you know, ADA compliant. You know, I have a nerve injury, unfortunately, which is what put me out of law enforcement.

And some of the door hardware that's on the market, I can't lock because I physically cannot push or turn whatever it is that's on the door to lock the door because it's not ADA compliant. I don't look handicapped, but that's a disability for me. Some of the hardware that's out there, you know, isn't certified, you know, or they attest to having, you know, I'll say six million cycles.

I don't know, you know, look for stuff that's grade one ANSI BHMA certified as well as having that fire rating. And making sure that those stores can allow that free egress like we've been talking about all along at all times, you know. But we want the door to also be locked.

So, you know, look for doors that can stay locked or look for door hardware, excuse me, that can stay locked and allow that free egress. There's so many factors, you know, unfortunately, that design professionals really have to look at. Like we said before, where is it going to go? You know, it seems simple that we could just open a catalog and say, okay, we're going to put this lock on that door.

And the next thing you know, you're looking at it and go, well, that area's got a, it's plastic and it's hot there and it's in the direct sun, you know. So those factors aren't really maybe, that hardware isn't really good for those factors. Is it going to be exposed to the weather? Is that keypad going to be in the sunlight all the time? Like Brandon was just saying, you want to make sure that it integrates with access control.

If the school is using electronic locks, is it going to be able to integrate with what the school is already using? Or are they going to have to upgrade? And again, if they're going to have to upgrade, now we're going back to that same factor of cost. So there's just a lot of factors, you know, that they really have to look at. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I really think that they should really listen to their clients and their client staff who use the products on a daily basis.

Because they're the ones that are going to have to repair it, use it, install it, and then ultimately give it to the staff and students for training. Dad, how do cost and affordability impact design choices for K-12 school districts? Well, money always seems to be an issue. Schools have to work under budgets, and they've got more constraints that they're faced with every year.

And I think the initial cost of hardware products can be scary to school districts when they're trying to work within those budgets. Even when they're constantly looking for ways to maybe value engineer and find some other solutions. In all honesty, schools should look to purchase only grade one products and try to do that from a competitive standpoint.

Some things tend to happen over the years in the market where school districts get locked into one particular manufacturer. And they don't allow substitutions on products when jobs come out from a bidding standpoint. So I think it's really important that schools look at doing things to allow open specifications as much as possible.

Allowing competitive brands from a variety of manufacturers. That's going to allow them the best opportunity to get good pricing on those projects and on the products that they need to keep their schools safe. Going with a lower grade product on the front end just ends up giving you a product that doesn't have the durability, doesn't last, and ends up costing significantly more in the long run.

Brandon, what are the risks of relying solely on exterior electronic access systems without also addressing the interior doors? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is the human element. I touched on that earlier. If you're relying on one layer, which in this case is the exterior layer, to solve all of your problems, you've overlooked one of the biggest things, and it's the human element.

So if you're relying on just your exterior, it takes one prop door. It takes one person giving their credential to somebody else, and it gets passed around. Or they're not adhering to the basic security principles and policies that the school district has.

And if that's the case, then you've breached the one and only layer that you have to the rest of the building. So unfortunately, in that circumstance, if they're not really addressing their interior doors and classroom door security and hardware and protocols, once that person has breached the one single layer of physical security that you've got, they've got free reign inside the building. They can get anywhere they need to go, anywhere they want to, because none of the rest of the doors have been addressed and the protocols haven't been addressed on those interior classroom doors.

And then another thing to think of is a lot of times we talk about design and features and security or we're thinking about a threat from the outside. If you go back and you look at a lot of these high profile, terrible incidents that have happened in schools, there's a pretty substantial percentage of them where that threat has come from the inside, where it's been a student that is already in the building has gotten in whatever they needed to get in to carry out their plans. So if you don't have a protocol in the right hardware on your classroom doors, once again, that threat from the inside is already there and can have free reign throughout the building.

We don't want that. And the biggest takeaway from that is you want a layered approach to school safety and security, because if you rely on one single layer to be your end all be all, it's going to be a tragic situation. How can door hardware solutions contribute to reducing liability for responsible parties? Sure.

And that gets into the litigious society that we live in. Unfortunately, fingers can be pointed in just about any direction that you want to. So what has the organization itself done to mitigate some of those things? Right.

So one of the things is to help avoid liability is showing that you followed those recognized standards of care. And like I was talking about with what pass and the ACES recommendations, when you employ those things, that's showing that you're taking a proactive approach and trying to do the right thing in the right way. Right.

And when you do that, you're helping mitigate your claims of negligence. Right. Like you just chose not to deal with it.

But when you're employing some of these strategies and recommendations that we've talked about throughout this this conversation, you're really helping mitigate those claims of negligence. And then to be completely honest with you, courts increasingly are looking at whether schools had taken reasonable security measures. You know, the three of us come from the law enforcement world and just about every standard that you can possibly think of.

And the legal realm is, was it reasonable? Right. What you do, was it reasonable? The decision that you make, was it reasonable? Well, in the school's situation, when it comes to their safety and security protocols, is what you were doing, was it reasonable? Did you take reasonable measures to mitigate the damage and to provide for the security of your kids? So I think that's probably the biggest part of it. Can you share a case study where the application of these types of products improved safety? Sure.

It's it's challenging to get first person details from the outside. Right. But one of the most recent probably actually probably the most recent circumstance that I can think of is just this year, the Evergreen High School shooting that happened in Evergreen, Colorado.

Unfortunately, that that school district is not isolated from previous incidents. That's actually where Columbine High School is. It's the same school district that Columbine was in.

They had an incident where a 16 year old kid. Once again, we talk about threats from the inside. Right.

Sixteen year old kid took a revolver and a bunch of ammunition to school. And when it got to be about lunchtime, unfortunately, he decided that he was going to start walking around the building shooting over a course of about nine minutes, shot off about 20 rounds. And in that in that chaos, two of the students were shot and injured pretty seriously.

As far as I can tell from the reports I'm seeing, both of those students are still thankfully alive in the hospital. I'm not 100 percent sure what their condition is so far. But one of the things I took and I took this from a local news article out there was a couple of quotes by the spokesperson for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office out there.

So I'm going to quote this. He would fire and reload, fire and reload, fire and reload. This went on and on.

And as he did that, he tried to find new targets and he came up against a roadblock on many of those doors. He couldn't get to those kids. And that was because they were behind a closed locked door and out of sight.

So, you know, we talk about all these measures that you can take. But that's I would say as close as you can get to the most recent first person example of where a closed locked door and getting out of sight can help at least mitigate some of the tragedy. Wow.

Thank you so much for sharing that one. Now, as we wrap up, I'd like to take a look ahead at what's coming next in school safety and how design professionals can prepare since safety is always evolving. Jen, how are independent manufacturers contributing to innovation in the school safety space? So, you know, we talked about many different things.

So, you know, as school security is evolving, independent manufacturers are able to be very innovative. You know, we don't have the tie to a specific product line. We have the flexibility to be able to make products.

They have the ability to make products that are durable and long lasting. They have the ability to address unique situations and customize products for school districts where some of your other larger product lines can't do because they're more rigid in some of the product that they have. You know, I have a school district that wants one function on the inside of the door and another function on the outside of the door, where in most cases that might not be possible.

But because we're an independent manufacturer, we're able to customize that for them and we're able to be there almost immediately for them because we're a smaller company where we build a partnership with the customers that we have. You know, it's not just about making the next sale. It's about building that partnership and making school safe.

So how do design professionals balance performance, budget and compliance when specifying door hardware? So that, you know, is a tricky situation. It goes back to what we were talking about before. It all starts with that spec writer, right? And the design professionals building that school, whether it be a new school or as Brandon has said, you know, in the retrofit capabilities.

Hiring an independent spec writer is where it's at. You know, school districts and design professionals need to have somebody that's going to give them an open, fair spec and give them multiple manufacturers so that they can look at it in a totality and know that they're getting fair prices and they're getting a good product for the amount that they're paying. They also need to know and look at what the owner is really looking for.

So, like I said before, you know, listening to that end user, you know, making sure that the locks that they're purchasing in the hardware that they're purchasing also meets all of the compliance factors. The school district is saying it's not going to fit, but they're the design professional or the spec writer writes it in. Anyway, it might cost them more money because they're going to have to redo some of the other parts of their buildings because it's not going to fit in with what they already have.

So, you know, that retrofit capability is key, but at the end of the day, the products have to meet what the user wants and the design professionals really need to be able to make that balance work. And I get that it's tricky. Todd, what collaborative opportunities exist between designers, school districts and security professionals? Well, I think the key to that is starting with collaboration.

Design trends seem to happen in a vacuum, oftentimes without consideration from all parties. So my recommendation with that is that design teams have collaborative meetings with all the individual discipline stakeholders during the design process. Too often what I see happen is that that group doesn't get together.

And the meeting on what to do about safety and function in the building happens after the building's been turned over to the school district for use. And that that dreaded conversation comes up where everyone's saying, well, I wish we would have done that instead, or I wish we would have thought about that in the first place. And if there's too many gorillas in the marketplace that aggressively drive products into specifications without regard to the end user, the collaborative meeting needs to happen with the architect, the designer, the school district personnel, the safety and security director for the school, and other outside consultants that are focused on the solution, not focused on a very specific product.

Maybe manufactured by a single manufacturer. And what advice would you give design professionals about proactively addressing school security in their projects? I would go back to the last comment. You know, design professionals need to demand that security and safety professionals are a part of the process, not just a hardware specification writer who's looking to write a spec that's driven toward their product.

There's some really good resources in the marketplace that have collaborated from a independent standpoint to make recommendations on hardware requirements and other security requirements for schools and how to incorporate that into the design phase. And I think involving those types of groups and those individuals very early on in the design process allows for a safer and more secure school environment. And Brandon, what is one final piece of industry wisdom that you would like to share with our audience? Sure.

I hope that we can drive home that a classroom lock on a door is not just a hunk of metal hanging there. It is a lifeline for the people who are in that building. And when you put the right hardware on doors, you need to do it in a situation where teachers can secure the room fast.

They can keep their students safe. And it really makes the school ready for emergencies when we do this thing the right way. So keep it simple.

Keep it reliable. And when all else fails, get in behind a closed, locked door and out of sight. And that's the core principle.

Thank you, Brandon, Jen, and Todd for sharing your expertise with us today. We've explored how design professionals can navigate safety challenges, codes, sustainability, and the future of school security all through the lens of door hardware and thoughtful specification. We appreciate you joining us on the Spec Shaman podcast as we continue exploring the details that make great architecture possible.

Thank you for listening to the Spec Shaman podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to our show and leave us a review. A huge thank you to our guests who made this show possible.

Thanks all for this episode, folks. See you next time.