Any Kantech fluent people on here? How about S2

You guys and gals know everything so...

An opportunity, or possibly a nightmare has presented itself. 

One of my local customers has an access control system that is fairly complicated. Call it 1500-2000 doors and 14k employees. 

The current access control contractor had one service tech that knew the access system inside and out and pretty much kept it alive. His last day was today. He is now under a non-compete so that knowledge is lost to the hospital, the current contractor, and anyone else that bids for the contract for at least a year. There is also some bad blood between the hospital and the current contractor due to poor service and slow response time. The current contractor underbid the service contract counting on new construction to make up the difference. Due to some screw ups on a new building, they have lost the new construction. With their main service tech leaving, service will only get worse. 

I have been approached by several hospital managers about bringing the access control system under the door contract I currently have with them. They like us, we know how to deal with them, they pay to be at the top of my list and we always get the job done in a timely manner. I also already maintain all the locking hardware that the access system controls. We are always the first contractor called for door issues. Frequently it is not the door hardware but the access control system that is the problem. We worked very well together with the guy that is leaving to keep the system operating smoothly. We scratch his back, he scratched ours. It made the customer happy. The hospital staff knows this. What we would be picking up is the access control hardware and integrating the hardware with the software. The customer could make one call and know the problem was handled, be it door hardware or access control. 

There are a couple of concerning issues. One, I would be coming at this system cold. The one guy that knows where all the controllers are located is gone and unwilling to get sued over helping out. The contractor he just left is very tenacious about non-compete clauses. There are 100s of them tucked in closets all over the buildings. The other problem is I know just enough about access control to be dangerous. The hardware is pretty easy and straight forward. I fall short when it comes to software. 

How involved is access control software? Is it just another software package? Or is it more like machine language? 

Most of their existing hardware is Kantech, but they recently finished a new building that has S2 hardware in it. 

I wouldn't mind getting into this. There is always a gray area between access control and door hardware. I make a lot of money shining light into that area and making security systems play nicely with door systems. I wouldn't mind being able to provide a complete package to a customer that eliminates that gray area. Kind of a one-stop-shop. Unfortunately, this would not be just testing the waters. This would be jumping off the high dive and I'd really like to know something about the depth before I do that. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated. 

My first thought is that seems large enough that finding someone willing to move to the best city on the east coast would be worth it.  My second thought is that's worth spending the next week going down a deep berking rabbit hole learning it yourself so that you are that guy.

Surprised you hadn't done this already. Going to pay nice dividends once you figure this out or make the right hire. I don't know E36 M3 about E36 M3 for access software but I'm looking forward to following along. 

Bumping this for the day crowd. 

Get the contract from the customer and hire someone..  finding a 1099 contractor is super easy these days.  Once you get that person on board, you can convert to full time if needed.

-- Disclaimer:  No specific knowledge of Kantech/door hardware, but I do have a background of machine integration with various types of controls & servo hardware --

I would be on the horn today with Kantech and talk to one of their sales & tech people.   Start by getting a sales pitch/summary so you understand the high level view of how their system works (that'll answer the question of whether you're working with a GUI or coding assembly manually to add new features & people).  Next, I'd chat up the sales/applications engineer about what a typical large installation looks like physically as well as the digital interface to it.  Again, no need to see what the plugs look like, but if they have a site plan to explain how often they need to have a switch/repeater/whatever-they-call-it, how many connections each one of those interface boxes could have, how those are managed vs. the main server, etc.?

If they have a local reseller, even better.  That local reseller would probably be happy to spend time with you to ensure that their cash cow is alive for a long time.

That should give you enough info to know whether you could handle it, or find someone with the appropriate skills to learn it.

After that, it's going to be a matter of physically tracing locations.  That might be worth hiring a local college drafting guy for a $10/hour on-your-own-schedule kinda gig to give you the locations of the stuff and suspected wiring routing between it. 

he current access control contractor had one service tech that knew the access system inside and out and pretty much kept it alive. His last day was today. He is now under a non-compete so that knowledge is lost to the hospital,

If it's anything like it is here, most of those clauses are poorly written and unenforceable. 

In reply to Peabody :

Theirs is very specific and they have sued 2 people in the last couple of years. 

I have found the access control software and installed a demo version. It's pretty straight forward. I'm sure there will be a learning curve but it doesn't look extremely complicated. 

I have reached also out to Kantech and S2. We will see where that leads.

I have also learned that the entire security camera system is tied into the access control system. Just started looking into that one. 

I too am hung up on the non-compete being hard to enforce.  However, you say it is enforceable.  This makes me wonder if like so many things these days (w/o being political) if the lack of this person can somehow be claimed as a risk to Covid...bla, bla, bla.  

Maybe, get the hospital (the big dog) to hire the gentleman directly and then have the hospital loan that employee out to you.  Again, unique approaches to unique times (Covid...bla, bla, bla.)  If the hospital is big, they have a big legal team who is probably not afraid of the non compete.  

I would think the big dog would have a lot of leverage. They could do things like counter sue the guy's old company for "failure to deliver" or some other problem issues.  These counter suits might be enough to get the little dog to just drop the bone and not want to "risk it all" over this one former employee.  

In reply to John Welsh :

6 months ago that was the plan. The hospital would hire the tech, I would supply and install the hardware and he would basically manage the system and handle all the software. The hospital was unwilling to hire him based on the non-compete agreement so things went back to the status quo. That all changed when he turned in his notice a couple of weeks ago. 

John Welsh said:

I would think the big dog would have a lot of leverage. They could do things like counter sue the guy's old company for "failure to deliver" or some other problem issues.  These counter suits might be enough to get the little dog to just drop the bone and not want to "risk it all" over this one former employee.  

Unfortunately, the little dog in this case is bigger than the big dog. They have 160k employees and worldwide coverage.  Most of my competition is like this. 

From a business standpoint it may be worth approaching the contractor that is holding the non compete and see what it would cost to by out the contract. It may be a bit of an ouch up front but it seems that it could be profitable in the long run.  This may be something that the client would see the value in and help financially as it seems to be very much in there best interest to retain the services of this person. I would then do something about having all your eggs in one basket but that is another problem for another time.  

You just need to put a value to this person that you can not talk to/employ due to the non compete and then approach the contractor with an offer.  A little legal advice here may be very helpful.  The offer to the contractor should be tendered by your council.  Maybe your client would be willing to go to bat and put there weight behind you to help solve this. 

In reply to dean1484 :

Like Dean said, and to expand on what I wrote, I wish there was a way that the Hospital would solve this problem of loosing the gentleman and I wish that he and you were somehow combined as the ingredients to that solution.  

Said another way, the hospital has come to you and said, "we have this problem now, can you take over and solve our problem?"  I wish the answer could be, "yes, I'll help solve YOUR PROBLEM" but I'll need your help in getting it solved."  That might be what it takes to find the fastest, most effective solution.  Otherwise, the hospital will have to endure your learning curve.  

I was a customer and administrator of a multi-location S2 installation.

I would ask after any plans that might have been submitted to the fire marshal when the system was being set up. The approved package should be on file with the customer, and that should help.

The S2 UI is pretty good about exposing the physical layout of controllers and blades, such that you should be able to see how it's wired together, and to see how the inside of the controller box should look.

Befrend the IT department, specifically the network team at the customer end. They should know where all of the boxes live.

Access control is a hoot. I'd love to be able to do this stuff more often.

Buying out the non-compete sounds interesting. I'll have to look into that. 

Mike, thanks for the information and thoughts.