When you’re responsible for a busy site, it’s usually easy to know what’s broken. A barrier stops opening, an intercom fails, a gate gets damaged or someone reports an access problem, and it gets added to the maintenance list. What can be much harder to spot are the things that are still working, but perhaps aren’t working as safely, securely or reliably as they should.
An automatic gate might operate every day despite a developing safety issue, while an entrance that seems perfectly functional could still allow people or vehicles onto the site without enough control. Likewise, a barrier that has become increasingly unreliable may not become a priority until it finally fails during the morning rush and suddenly becomes everyone’s problem.
That’s why reviewing your entrances and perimeter security should involve more than checking whether everything works today. A useful review looks at safety, security, reliability and operational impact together, while also helping you understand where maintenance or future investment might actually make a difference.
So, if you’re responsible for a commercial or public-facing site, here are 8 practical checks you can carry out yourself.
It’s tempting to begin with a list of assets: three gates, two barriers, an intercom, some fencing and an access-control system. However, before looking at any individual piece of equipment, it’s worth thinking about what actually happens around the site and what you’re trying to protect.
Consider how staff, visitors, contractors and vehicles move through the premises during a normal day, but also think about what changes outside normal working hours. Where do deliveries arrive? Which entrances are busiest? Are parts of the site accessible to the public? Are there children or vulnerable people nearby? Do you store valuable equipment, sensitive materials or information?
The priorities will naturally be very different for a school, shopping centre, warehouse, office, industrial facility or residential development, even if they all happen to use similar gates and barriers.
So rather than beginning with “What security equipment do we have?”, start with “What could realistically happen here, and what would the consequences be?” Once you understand that, it’s much easier to judge whether the systems around the site are appropriate.
When you work somewhere every day, it’s surprisingly easy to stop noticing things that have gradually become normal. That makes a physical walk around the perimeter and every entrance worthwhile, particularly if you deliberately try to look at the site from the perspective of somebody who doesn’t know how it’s supposed to work.
Could somebody enter the grounds without being noticed? Are pedestrian and vehicle movements properly separated? Are there areas with poor visibility? Could a vehicle simply follow another one through a controlled entrance? Is a gate routinely left open because closing it creates an inconvenience for staff or deliveries?
Pay particular attention to workarounds. If people regularly prop something open, share access codes, bypass a system or avoid using an entrance in the intended way, the answer isn’t always stricter rules. Sometimes it’s a sign that the system no longer suits the way the site actually operates.
Those behaviours are useful information because they can reveal vulnerabilities that aren’t obvious from looking at the equipment alone.
Ask someone from your team who isn’t as familiar with the entrances or security systems to walk the site with you. They may notice things you’ve become used to seeing every day, question why something works a certain way, or spot a potential issue you’ve simply stopped noticing.
If you’d like to go a step further, you can also ask the CM Gates team to carry out a free full asset site survey. We’ll walk the site with you, review your existing gates, barriers, access control and perimeter security, and highlight any safety, security or reliability concerns we find. There’s no obligation to proceed with any work afterwards.
[Book a Free Full Site Survey →]
This is particularly important with powered gates, barriers and automated entrances because successful operation isn’t, by itself, a safety assessment.
A gate can still open and close while there are issues elsewhere in the system, so look for anything that has changed. Is it moving differently from before? Has it ever made contact with a person, vehicle or object? Are the relevant safety devices still present and functioning correctly? Has anything around the entrance been altered since the system was installed?
Even changes that seem unrelated can affect how people interact with an automated entrance. New fencing, resurfacing, landscaping, changes to pedestrian routes or a different traffic flow can all alter the environment the original system was designed for.
Maintenance history matters too. If nobody responsible for the site can confidently say when an automated entrance was last professionally inspected or serviced, that is worth investigating in itself.
Reliability can sometimes get treated as purely a maintenance issue, but from a facilities-management perspective it is closely connected to security and site operations.
Take each important gate, barrier or controlled entrance and ask a very simple question:
What happens to our operation if this stops working tomorrow morning?
The consequences won’t be equal. A failed barrier at a quiet secondary car park might be inconvenient, while a loading-yard gate failure could interrupt deliveries and vehicle movements. A security entrance stuck open could leave an area exposed, while a critical gate stuck closed might prevent vehicles from entering or leaving altogether.
Once you’ve identified the entrances with the greatest operational impact, look at their history as well. If engineers are repeatedly attending the same asset, parts are becoming difficult to obtain or temporary repairs are beginning to accumulate, that deserves a different level of attention from an older system that has remained reliable.
Age alone doesn’t necessarily mean something needs replacing. Condition, failure history and the consequence of failure are usually much more useful when deciding what should be prioritised.
Access control often becomes a conversation about technology: keypads, fobs, GSM systems, video intercoms, ANPR and management software. The technology matters, but the more useful question for a facilities manager is whether the right people have the right access, at the right time, through the right entrance.
Think about starters and leavers, contractors, deliveries, temporary staff, visitors and anyone who requires access outside normal working hours. Then look at how those permissions are actually managed.
For example:
You can have sophisticated access-control equipment and still have weak site security if the processes around it aren’t being managed properly. Equally, the answer isn’t always more technology. Sometimes simplifying an existing system can make it both easier to manage and more likely to be used correctly.
One of the difficulties with entrance security is that improving one area can sometimes create problems somewhere else. Making access more restrictive may improve security, for example, but not if it causes vehicles to queue onto a road or encourages pedestrians to use an unsafe route.
The same applies when convenience becomes the priority. Leaving a gate open all day might improve traffic flow, but it can completely undermine the reason the gate exists in the first place.
This is why we prefer to look at an entrance as one complete system. The gate or barrier, pedestrian routes, fencing, intercom, access control, traffic flow and safety measures all interact with one another, so changing one element can have consequences elsewhere.
In many cases, the best improvement isn’t simply installing more equipment. It’s understanding how the entrance needs to work for the people using it and then making sure the security and safety arrangements support that.
Sometimes the equipment hasn’t changed at all, but the site around it has.
Perhaps headcount has increased, a building has changed use, deliveries have become more frequent or opening hours are longer. Maybe new contractors are regularly attending, a car park has become busier or an entrance that was originally designed for occasional use is now operating throughout the day.
Those changes matter because the original gate, barrier or access-control arrangement was designed around a particular way of using the site. If that use changes significantly, the risks and operational requirements can change with it.
As part of an annual review, it’s therefore worth asking “What’s different from this time last year?” rather than looking only for changes to the equipment itself.
Finding something that could be improved doesn’t automatically mean it needs replacing, and a useful site review shouldn’t finish with a huge list of things to buy.
Instead, the aim should be to understand what deserves attention first and why. Some findings might need investigating quickly because they relate to safety. Others might simply justify preventative maintenance, while ageing but functional equipment could be incorporated into future R&M or CAPEX planning rather than becoming an immediate project.
When you’re deciding where budget should go, it can help to look at four things together:
That gives you a much stronger basis for planning than simply replacing equipment because it’s old or repeating last year’s maintenance budget.
It also helps distinguish between something that is genuinely a priority and something that would simply be nice to improve.
If you’ve worked through all eight checks, you’ve already completed a useful first review of your site. However, there are quite a few factors to consider across different entrances and assets, which is exactly why we decided to make the process easier.
We’ve created a free Site Safety & Security Risk Self-Assessment for facilities and site managers, covering four areas: site risk, entrance safety, maintenance and reliability, and security and access control.
It takes around three minutes, and once you’ve completed it you’ll receive an overall result along with a breakdown showing which areas appear to be performing well and where it may be worth taking a closer look.
[Take the Free Site Risk Self-Assessment →]
There is no obligation to proceed with any work afterwards. If the assessment does highlight something you’d like to investigate properly, you can also request a free full asset site survey, where our team can review your existing gates, barriers, access control and perimeter security in person and provide clear recommendations on what, if anything, should be prioritised.
Ultimately, a good site review doesn’t need to result in a major project. Sometimes it simply confirms that things are being managed well, while other times it brings forward some preventative maintenance or identifies an issue that has quietly been overlooked.
What matters is having enough information to know the difference.
CM GATES & BARRIERS LTD is registered as a limited company in Scotland under company number SC591844
Registered Address: 4 Polbeth Industrial Estate, Polbeth, West Calder, Scotland, EH55 8TJ
We have many happy customers across Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Paisley, East Kilbride, Livingston, Dunfermline, Hamilton, Cumbernauld, Kirkcaldy, Inverness, Perth, Kilmarnock, Ayr, Coatbridge, Greenock, Glenrothes, Stirling, Airdrie, Falkirk, Irvine, Dumfries, Motherwell, Rutherglen, Cambuslang, Wishaw, Bearsden, Newton Mearns, Clydebank, Elgin, Renfrew, Bishopbriggs, Bathgate, Arbroath, Kirkintilloch, Musselburgh, Dumbarton, Bellshill, Peterhead, St Andrews, Bonnyrigg, Barrhead, Blantyre, Penicuik, Grangemouth, Kilwinning, Broxburn, Johnstone, Larkhall or Erskine. Call us today for a free quote.
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