In Mark Kuhn’s next post, he asks a question that I’ve wondered about myself.  I know of a few applications where the codes and standards require doors to be locked or lockable, but maybe there are others?  Please share your insight in the comments!

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Electrical/Maintenance roomI had an interesting call from an architect last week. What made it interesting was that most of the questions I receive are related to egress, fire or smoke. However, this question was about a mechanical room in an ambulatory clinic that the owner did not want to lock. So, the architect asked the question, “Are there doors that are required to lock?”

This was simple question, but a complicated one at the same time. It’s so complicated that I’m going to ask you all, the loyal iDH readers, for some help with this.

I am aware of three places where a door is required to be locked or lockable:

  • Elevator equipment rooms:  ASME A17.1 – Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators requires some elevator-related doors to be kept locked, and includes requirements for how those locks are keyed. For the specifics, check out this post.
  • Electrical rooms: NFPA 70 – National Electrical Code tells us that for rooms housing certain types of electrical equipment, “Doors shall be equipped with locks, and doors shall be kept locked, with access allowed only to qualified persons….”  There’s more information about hardware for electrical rooms in this Decoded article.
  • Classrooms and other occupied rooms in educational facilities: This is brand new and coming soon…the following text has been approved for the 2027 edition of the International Building Code (IBC): “1010.2.7.1 Egress doors in educational occupancies. Egress doors from classrooms, offices, and other occupied rooms shall be provided with locking arrangements designed to keep intruders from entering the room and shall comply with all of the following:…”  You can read more about the upcoming change in this code update.

You may have noticed that only one of these examples is from the I-Codes and the other two examples are from other codes and standards, that as a “hardware guy” I am not as familiar with. This brings me to my question that I would like your help with…Do you know of any other code or standard that requires a door to lock, restricting access?

I just have one request, and it’s the same requirement that is asked of me whenever I tell an architect or owner that there is a code that says this or that…Prove it! Along with leaving your example in the comments, please tell me the standard and section where the requirement is called out.

I thank all of you in advance for your knowledge and help with this!

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