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Automatic door maintenance, and the record to prove it
Scheduled servicing for automatic pedestrian doors across Miami-Dade. Sensors, closing speed and force, break-out, guide rails and signage, checked against the standards the doors were listed to.
Start a service schedule
Tell us how many doors and what type. A dispatcher calls you back.
Why doors drift
An automatic door is a safety device that slowly stops behaving like one.
Nothing about a drifting automatic door announces itself. Closing speed creeps up. Closing force creeps up with it. A sensor loses a little sensitivity, then a little more. The signage falls off and nobody replaces it. Every one of those changes is invisible until the day the door catches someone, and on that day the question is not what happened, it is what the maintenance record shows.
That is why the automatic door industry is built around a two-part routine rather than around repair calls. Annual inspection by a qualified inspector is tied to compliance with the ANSI/BHMA standards covering automatic doors. Between those inspections, AAADM recommends a daily safety check carried out by the owner or the person responsible for the equipment.
We handle the servicing side of that routine across Miami-Dade: sensors, operators, closing speed and force, break-out, guide rails, thresholds and signage, on a schedule, with a record per opening. If a door needs work beyond adjustment, that becomes automatic door repair and we quote it separately rather than burying it.
Who does what
Daily is yours. Annual is ours.
The split confuses people, and the confusion is usually what leaves a building with no record at all. It is simpler than it looks.
| Task | Frequency | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Sensors respond on approach | Daily | Building owner or the person responsible for the equipment. |
| Door opens and closes without impact | Daily | Same. Watch a full cycle. |
| Threshold and guide rails intact | Daily | Same. A visual check. |
| Safety signage present and legible | Daily | Same. Replace missing decals. |
| Full inspection and test | Annual | A qualified inspector, tied to compliance with the ANSI/BHMA standards. |
| Adjustment, parts and repair | As found | A door technician, scheduled off the back of the inspection. |
The visit
What we check on every opening
Activation and presence sensing
Approach sensors, presence sensors on both swing and approach sides, and the behaviour when someone stops in the opening rather than walking straight through.
Closing speed and force
The values that drift furthest and matter most. Measured and adjusted back to the listed specification rather than to whatever feels acceptable.
Operator condition
Motor, control board, belt or arm, limits and the settings stored on the board, recorded so a later change is visible.
Break-out and egress
On egress doors without standby power the ADA expects a 32 inch minimum clear break-out in emergency mode. It gets tested, not assumed.
Guide rails, thresholds and glass
The physical parts that take the abuse. Loose guide rails and damaged thresholds are both trip hazards and door failures waiting to happen.
Signage and records
Decals present and legible, and a written record per opening so the annual question has an answer.
What we find
The most common findings on a first visit
Closing force well above specification
The single most common finding, and the one most likely to injure someone. It creeps up gradually, so staff acclimatise to it.
A presence sensor aimed at the floor
Reflective flooring, a moved mat or a shifted planter, and the door reopens constantly until someone reduces the sensitivity to stop the nuisance. Now it does not see people either.
Missing safety decals
They come off with cleaning and never get replaced. They are also the cheapest item on the entire list to fix.
Break-out that will not break out
Painted, seized or obstructed. On an egress opening this is the finding that matters most and gets noticed least.
An operator running on factory defaults
Installed, powered up, never commissioned to the actual opening and traffic.
No record at all
The doors may be fine. Without a record there is no way to demonstrate it, which is the position nobody wants to be in after an incident.
Where we work
Automatic door service across Miami-Dade
Retail, medical, hospitality, office and institutional entrances, dispatched from two South Florida locations. We also cover Broward and Palm Beach. Get in touch to talk about a schedule.
- Downtown Miami
- Brickell
- Coral Gables
- Doral
- Hialeah
- Kendall
- Miami Beach
- Aventura
- Sunny Isles Beach
- North Miami Beach
- Homestead
- Countywide Miami-Dade
Questions
Before you book a service visit
How often does an automatic door need inspecting?
Annually, by a qualified inspector, and that annual inspection is tied to compliance with the ANSI/BHMA standards covering automatic doors. Separately, AAADM recommends a daily safety check by the building owner or the person responsible for the equipment. High traffic entrances often justify servicing more than once a year, but the annual inspection is the fixed point everything else hangs off.
What exactly is the daily safety check?
It takes about a minute per door. Confirm the activating and safety sensors respond, watch the door open and close without impact, check that the threshold and guide rails are intact and properly secured, verify the safety signage is present and legible, and clear anything obstructing the traffic path. AAADM publishes the procedure on a label that can be obtained from the association or from a certified inspector.
Is maintenance the same as repair?
No, and it is worth keeping them separate on the invoice. Maintenance is the scheduled visit: inspection, testing, adjustment back to specification, and the record. Repair is what happens when a component has failed and needs replacing. A good maintenance program reduces repair calls but never eliminates them, and any company promising otherwise is selling you something.
What records should we be keeping?
A written record of the annual inspection for each opening, plus whatever your insurer or corporate policy asks for on the daily checks. The useful test is simple: if an incident happened tomorrow and someone asked when that door was last inspected and by whom, could you answer with a document rather than a memory?
Do you cover doors you did not install?
Yes. Most of the openings we maintain were installed by somebody else, often years ago, sometimes by a company no longer trading. The first visit establishes what is actually there and what condition it is in, which is exactly the information missing when a building changes hands or a manager changes.
Related services
Related door services
Get your doors on a schedule
One visit establishes the condition of every opening: what is within specification, what has drifted, and what the record currently looks like if someone asks for it.