A vague brief produces a catalogue. A specific one produces a shortlist, a sample and a price you can compare — and it takes about half a page more effort.
- The six things a brief needs
- State what you do not know
- Include the acceptance criteria
- Be explicit about quantity structure
- What a good answer looks like
The six things a brief needs
What is installed and how credentials are issued today. Which populations receive credentials and roughly how many. The wear environment for each. Whether credentials are recovered. Artwork direction and how many designs. And the date something has to be in someone’s hand.
Six items. A brief with those produces a specific answer; a brief without them produces a catalogue, because the supplier has nothing to narrow against.
- System
- Make and model, or what your system reports when it reads a credential
- Populations
- Residents, children, day visitors, members, staff — with rough numbers
- Environment
- Wear period and moisture pattern for each population
- Lifecycle
- Recovered and reissued, or issued once
- Artwork
- How many designs, and which marks are authoritative
- Date
- When it must be in hand, working backwards through approval
State what you do not know
An unknown is a next question rather than a blocker. A brief saying the lock system is not yet confirmed lets a supplier tell you what to ask for and from whom; a brief that guesses produces a confident answer to the wrong question.
The most common useful admission is that nobody knows what the current credential actually is. That is normal, and it is solved by reading one rather than by remembering.
Include the acceptance criteria
What will make you approve the sample: no closure elongation after a week of wear, a mark legible wet at arm’s length, a first-presentation read at every reader in scope. Stating those in the brief means the sample you receive is aimed at them.
It also makes two suppliers comparable, because they are answering the same test rather than each presenting their best case.
Security keys, live encoding secrets and system credentials. Nothing about a brief, a quotation or a first technical review requires them, and a supplier who asks casually is telling you something.
Be explicit about quantity structure
Not just a total. How many artworks, how many colourways, how many sizes, and what allowance you want for misfits, staff and reissues. Minimum order is 500 pieces per artwork, so the structure determines the number far more than the total does.
A brief that says "about 1,500" invites an answer that is wrong in a way nobody notices until the invoice.
What a good answer looks like
A shortlist of two or three constructions with reasons, an explicit statement of what still has to be confirmed technically, a sample proposal, and a quantity broken down by count rather than as one number.
An answer that is a catalogue, or that promises compatibility without confirmation, is telling you how the rest of the project will go.
Compatibility is confirmed against the property’s lock system, credential technology and encoding requirements before production. We do not claim universal compatibility.
Questions this raises
01What if we do not know our lock system?+
Say so in the brief. It is the most common unknown and the easiest to resolve — reading an existing working credential, or asking your integrator, answers it. A guess produces a confident answer to the wrong question.
02How do we compare two suppliers fairly?+
Put the acceptance criteria in the brief, so both are aiming at the same test rather than presenting their best case. Then compare the shortlists and the reasons given, not just the prices.
03What should make us cautious about a supplier?+
An answer that is a catalogue rather than a shortlist, a promise of compatibility without confirming your installation, or a casual request for security keys. Each tells you how the rest of the project will be handled.