Commercial Locksmith Services

A commercial building is not a house with more doors. It is a set of openings that each carry a job: a tenant suite that has to be re-secured between leases, a stair door that has to latch every time because the fire marshal says so, a rear service door that everyone props open, a storefront that racks in the frame every summer. Pro Locksmith works on those openings for property managers, facilities staff, building owners, retailers, medical offices, warehouses, restaurants and HOAs across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. We are licensed and insured, and the pages linked below explain in detail what each part of the work involves.

Most calls we get fall into one of a handful of buckets: keys and who holds them, credentials and who can badge in, doors that no longer close correctly, hardware that has to satisfy a code inspection, cameras, and the occasional morning when nobody can get in. This page walks through each of those in turn.

Key systems and key control

Every multi-door building eventually needs a plan for keys, and the plan is worth more than the hardware. A master key system lets a single key open a defined group of doors while each individual key opens only its own, which is what makes it possible for a maintenance tech to carry one key instead of a ring for every door. The value comes entirely from how the chart is drawn before anything is cut, which is why master key hierarchy design is the first conversation rather than an afterthought. A poorly designed hierarchy leaves cross-keying accidents that let the wrong key open the wrong door, and those are usually discovered long after the pins are set.

Residential portfolios have their own shape. A master key system for apartment buildings has to reconcile unit privacy, statutory access for repairs, common-area doors, mail and trash rooms, and the reality that units turn over constantly. That turnover is the reason commercial rekeying in multi-tenant buildings is a recurring line item rather than a one-time project. Rekeying changes what the existing cylinder responds to without replacing it, so a suite can be re-secured between tenants without buying new hardware every time.

Whether you rekey or replace depends on what is in the door now. Different bodies take different cylinders, and understanding commercial lock cylinder types — mortise cylinders, rim cylinders, key-in-knob cores, interchangeable cores — tells you whether a change is a simple cylinder swap or a full hardware replacement. Interchangeable core systems in particular let staff pull and replace a core with a control key, which is a meaningful difference for a manager who handles frequent turnover. When replacement is the answer, our page on what a commercial lock change costs explains the variables that drive the number so you can build a realistic budget line instead of guessing.

None of it holds unless somebody governs the keys. A written key control policy for property management covers who signs keys out, what happens when one is lost, how contractors are issued temporary access, and how the whole system is audited. Buildings without a policy don’t have a security system; they have a collection of locks and an unknown number of copies in circulation.

High-security and restricted key systems

Standard keyways are sold in every hardware store, which means a standard key can be duplicated by anyone holding it, including a departing employee on their last afternoon. A restricted keyway removes that option: the blanks are not commercially available, and duplication is controlled by the system owner. Our page on restricted keyways a tenant cannot copy explains how that control is enforced and what it means for a landlord who wants to know that the key handed back at move-out is the only key.

As an authorized dealer for high-security lock systems, we can set up and administer restricted key programs where duplication is limited to authorized signers on file. High-security cylinders also add physical attack resistance — hardened inserts against drilling, tighter tolerances and secondary locking elements against picking and bumping — which matters most on perimeter doors, IT rooms, pharmacy and records storage, and anywhere a loss would be more than an inconvenience. These systems cost more per cylinder than commodity hardware and are worth specifying selectively: the doors that protect people, data or controlled inventory, rather than every closet in the building.

Commercial security assessments and surveys

Managers frequently inherit buildings they did not spec, with hardware installed by several contractors over many years and no documentation of any of it. A security assessment is how you replace assumptions with a record. We walk the property opening by opening — perimeter doors, tenant entries, stair and roof access, mechanical and electrical rooms, loading docks, gates, and the interior doors that protect anything sensitive — and inventory what is actually installed on each one.

The survey documents the door and frame material and condition, the lockset and cylinder type, closers and hold-opens, exit devices, hinges, and whether the opening carries a fire label or is missing one it should have. It notes doors that fail to latch, frames that have been pried or drilled, hardware that has been defeated with tape or wedges, and openings where the current arrangement conflicts with egress requirements. Alongside the physical inventory we run a keying and credential audit: how many key levels exist, which keys are unaccounted for, whether the master chart still matches reality, which credentials in the access control system belong to people who no longer work there, and whether anyone is reviewing that list on a schedule.

What you get at the end is a written report organized by opening, separating items that are code or life-safety issues from items that are security gaps and items that are deferred maintenance. That structure exists so the report can be used as a budget document — you can fund the code items now, phase the security work over the next cycle, and hand the same document to ownership without translating it. If we do none of the work that follows, the report is still yours.

Access control and electrified hardware

At some point key management stops scaling and it makes more sense to control access electronically. Access control systems replace the lost-key-means-rekey-the-building problem with a credential you can delete from a screen, and they add a record of who opened which door and when. Choosing between formats is the first real decision, and the tradeoffs between card access and mobile credentials come down to how you issue and revoke, whether visitors and contractors need temporary access, and what your staff will actually carry.

Under the credential is the hardware that moves the latch. Deciding between electric strikes and maglocks shapes both the egress design and how the door behaves in a power failure: an electric strike keeps the mechanical lock in place and releases the strike, while a maglock holds the door shut by magnetic force and requires its own release path for anyone leaving. Aluminum storefronts have particular quirks, and electric strike installation in an aluminum storefront means cutting into a narrow tubular jamb with limited depth and routing wire through a frame that was not designed for it.

Monitoring is the part that gets skipped and then missed. Door position switches and request-to-exit sensors are what let the system distinguish a door that was legitimately opened from one that was forced or propped, and they are the reason your reports mean something. Without them, an access control system tells you that a credential was presented, not that the door ever closed again.

Life safety and code compliance

Some hardware exists because people have to get out. Panic bars and exit devices allow egress with a single motion under crowd pressure, and they are required on assembly, educational and certain other occupancies regardless of what the door looked like when you bought the building. When an existing opening needs to be brought into compliance, retrofitting a panic bar to an existing door is often possible, though the frame, the door construction and any fire label determine which devices are eligible. Routine push bar installation and repair keeps those devices working, because a panic device that has to be shoved twice is a device that will fail somebody in the dark.

Fire doors are their own discipline. Fire-rated door assemblies are listed as complete units — door, frame, hinges, closer, latch and any glazing — and a single unlisted substitution or an unfilled hole can void the rating for the whole opening. NFPA 80 calls for those assemblies to be inspected and documented on an annual basis, and our page on fire door inspection under NFPA 80 covers what the inspector is checking and the paperwork you are expected to keep. Accessibility runs on a parallel track: an ADA door compliance audit looks at opening force, closing speed, hardware that can be operated without tight grasping or twisting of the wrist, clear width and approach clearances at each opening.

Doors, closers and hardware repair

A large share of commercial locksmith work is not locks at all — it is doors that no longer sit correctly in their frames. Aluminum storefront doors sag and rack until the latch misses the keeper, and storefront door adjustment and repair usually starts at the pivots and the frame rather than the lock everyone blames. Broader commercial door repair covers hollow metal doors with damaged edges, bent frames, failed thresholds and weatherstripping, and openings that have been forced.

Closers are the component most likely to be quietly wrong. Commercial door closer repair addresses leaking bodies, stripped arms and broken hold-opens, while door closer adjustment for property managers covers the sweep, latch and backcheck settings that decide whether a door actually latches and whether it stays within accessible opening force. On high-traffic openings, hinge selection changes the maintenance picture entirely, and the comparison of a continuous hinge versus butt hinges is really a comparison of how load is distributed along the door edge. Specification follows the same logic: the difference between Grade 1 and Grade 2 hardware ratings is cycle testing and strength, and putting light-duty hardware on a heavy-use door guarantees you buy it twice. A written door hardware maintenance schedule turns all of this from emergency calls into planned visits.

Cameras and surveillance

Cameras answer the questions access control cannot: what happened at the loading dock, who was in the parking lot, whether the person who badged in is the person the credential belongs to. Our approach to security camera installation for commercial properties starts with coverage planning — entries, cash handling areas, stockrooms, docks and drive aisles — then addresses mounting heights, lighting at night, storage retention and who will actually pull footage when it is needed. The general security camera installation page covers equipment types and how systems are wired and configured.

Lockouts and emergencies

Doors fail at inconvenient moments: a cylinder seizes, a key snaps in the lock, an employee leaves with the only set, an exit device jams before opening. Business lockout service covers getting a commercial opening back in operation without destroying hardware you would rather keep, and when a lock has to be drilled we bring the replacement with us so the door is left secure rather than open. If a departure or a break-in is behind the call, the visit is also the right moment to decide whether the opening needs rekeying or a hardware upgrade.

Service by area

Commercial work is local work — jurisdictions differ, inspectors differ, and the building stock differs from a downtown high-rise to a Palm Beach County office park. When a facilities manager searches for a locksmith near me, what they usually mean is someone already working in their county who can get to the property without treating it as an out-of-area trip. We cover commercial locksmith service in Fort Lauderdale and the surrounding Broward municipalities, commercial locksmith service in Miami and Miami-Dade, and commercial locksmith service in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County. Those three counties are the whole of our service area.

Pro Locksmith Fort Lauderdale is licensed and insured and works throughout Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. To discuss a keying plan, schedule a security assessment or get a door back in service, call (954) 406-8266.

Commercial services in detail

• Commercial security assessment
• Access control systems
• Master key systems
• Panic bars and exit devices
• Storefront and aluminium door repair
• Commercial door closer repair
• Security camera installation
• Commercial rekeying
• Business lockouts

What our customers say