Secure key control for property management.

The SHDM manages neighborhoods and housing complexes across Montreal. It keeps keys available for all residences and physical plant facilities. SHDM workers, contractors, janitors, and other staff frequently need access to facilities outside normal working hours or for emergencies. But tracking keys and ensuring they were available when needed was proving tricky.

Keys were kept in hand-built plywood cabinets, and the SHDM relied on simple pen-and-paper logging to track who signed out which keys and when. That system relied on workers logging their signals accurately—or at all. And sometimes, the contractors would get confused and log their destination or apartment number instead of their ID.

The SHDM building managers asked contractors to log estimated departure times so other staff knew when keys would be returned. But often, busy contractors would just hand over their keys to an SHDM employee on their way out of the building. That left too many keys unaccounted for, leaving building managers scrambling to get all work carried out on time.

SHDM contacted ecos about installing key cabinets throughout their jurisdiction. After extensive consultation, they arranged for ecos to install 28 key cabinets at buildings located at the primary intersections of the neighborhoods where they operated. They replaced the plywood lockers with customized steel key cabinets that held all the keys for the local residences, secured using electronic access control panels.

ecos key control cabinet at SHDM	ecos equipment and laptop lockers

With ecos’ key cabinets installed, SHDM can effectively track who signs out keys at every facility. If a contractor signs out a key, the system instantly logs the transaction so every building manager and agency administrator can see it. If there’s any question about who has a key, they can quickly pull it up on the ecos webman app dashboard.

Now, contractors sign into a worksite, authenticate themselves at a key cabinet, and select only the keys they need to complete their jobs through SHDM facilities. This is advantageous given the rekeying cost of SHDM facilities. If the master key for a building with 60 tenants were to go missing while signed out, the rekeying cost could easily total CAD$5000.

For SHDM, the real decider between ecos and its competitors was the webman remote app. The app allows SHDM supervisors to manage key access 24/7 for emergencies or out-of-the-ordinary requests. It allowed them to easily manage urgent key access no matter the time of day.