ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions Australia collaborated with group company Spence Doors to provide a custom door solution for the Herston Health Precinct’s state-of-the art Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) facility in Brisbane.
Spence Doors is a purpose-built door company acquired by ASSA ABLOY in March 2019. The two group companies combined their expertise to provide 1,750 doors for the new $340-million Brisbane hospital.
“Large projects like this one are a moving target of re-documentation and change over 18 months to two years,” says Greg Rech, sales representative at ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions Australia.
“Spence Doors personnel have a strong knowledge of door hardware applications, and I was able to have direct discussions, mainly with Spence Doors project manager Ben Tambling, to work out the best frame, door and hardware applications required for some interesting non-standard situations.
“In many ways, the added value of this close cooperation was the ability to head off issues early. This allowed the Spence team to profile their doors more accurately in advance, with the knowledge that the door-to-hardware connection would be correct.
“This type of collaboration was invaluable in this case.”
Spence Doors applied its ‘profiling’ technique – an electronic measurement of the door frame so that the door is manufactured exactly to the required specifications of the opening, ensuring a perfect fit every time.
“What sets us apart is our profiling process,” says Evan Herbert, state manager at Spence Doors. “When doors are hung by the traditional method they need to be scribed to the frame and prepared on site for hardware; you need to wait for the painter to finish the door and the frame, then go back to fit the hardware. All of this requires lots of labour, lots of time and creates both issues for people management and clean-up of any mess.
“As the project continued through the design and into the building phase, this continued collaboration meant the builder was targeting the best outcome for the project, without the potential conflicts which may come from multiple suppliers.”
Another advantage of using the profiling process is the ability to quickly replace a damaged door. Herbert explained that the profiling technique allowed them to replace doors without returning to site for measurement.
Spence Doors has a history of supplying fully encapsulated doors for hospitals. “Successfully delivering multiple projects for large hospitals in the past enabled our senior estimator to price the project to meet the expected results within budget,” Herbert said.
“As a global leader in opening solutions, we’re committed to delivering good outcomes for our customers. We talk about first-choice specification and being on the job first. That’s always what we aim to do,” Rech added.
