Leading automatic door specialist, Bauporte Gulf has launched a comprehensive preventative maintenance service in the UAE designed to ensure the continued safety of users and protect automatic doors from the rigours of day-to-day use, providing building managers with a breakdown-free solution.

The new service, involving regular maintenance and cleaning checks, improves reliability while reducing wear and tear as well as minimising asset life cycle and replacement costs for high-value automatic doors.

Covering automatic revolving, pivot and sliding doors, the package has already proven popular with building managers of high footfall commercial premises, such as airports, cafes, shopping malls, hotels and office buildings. It appeals to those wishing to avoid broken or jammed automatic doors that can lead to business interruption or inconvenienced customers, plus increased chiller costs and expensive emergency repairs.

By identifying minor repairs before costly breakdowns occur and avoiding same-day emergency service, building managers can capture significant operational savings and  keep customers moving in their premises without interruption. The Bauporte preventative maintenance service involves an annual service contract incorporating regular site visits and checks, as well as a 24/7 urgent callout service.

“There are two major benefits of preventative maintenance: reducing unnecessary wear and tear and identifying the need for minor repairs in advance of a breakdown. With the new Bauporte service, our technicians inspect all components of the door for signs of wear and damage, including door thresholds as well as rollers, upper and lower bearings, operators, shafts, and guides. In addition, we regularly adjust door tracks, bottom guides and rollers to ensure the components are level, aligned, and most importantly clean,” commented Paul Haslam, partner at Bauporte Gulf in Dubai.

He adds, “Maintaining automatic doors is more challenging in the Middle East than in Europe or elsewhere due to the presence of airborne sand particles that can penetrate the automatic door mechanism causing accelerated wear and damage. Therefore, it’s more important in the Gulf region for building managers to clean the inner workings of automatic doors regularly, or arrange a preventative maintenance service.

“Cleaning the internal workings of automatic doors is a key part of Bauporte’s service. Once clean, our staff then lubricate all drive rods, chains, rollers, bearings and pivots as required. This lubricant can help protect the mechanism from future sand penetration and potential damage, but it is equally important for this to be completed at regular intervals.

“Unlike standard manual doors, numerous sensors and many moving parts involved in modern automatic doors require the attention of specialist maintenance experts to ensure the safety of users. We also regularly check to ensure the drive train is properly aligned, installed and secured. Once this is complete, we calibrate door speeds, motion sensors and safety features to ensure the doors open and function accordingly. Our technicians verify sensor patterns using a walk-through test and complete visual inspections of the equipment to ensure the doors work correctly. This type of total automatic door solution is what Bauporte Gulf has become known for in Europe and it is now available here in the Middle East,” concluded Haslam.

Haslam also explained in the Gulf region it is most important to have a preventative maintenance service completed before the end of spring to keep doors running smoothly over the hot summer season months. Further checks will again be required in autumn to remove sand build-up and to check wear and tear following the extreme summer temperatures. The Bauporte preventative service includes additional scheduled checks throughout the year to ensure doors continue to operate smoothly.