The stone trade has had hard years. Novelda’s town hall asked the regional government for an emergency plan for the sector after job cuts at one of its largest firms, and smaller yards close for a season, change hands or simply stop while the order book is thin. A works that nobody visits for weeks is a different security problem from one that is busy every day.
Start at the boundary
Most of what is worth taking from a yard is heavy: metal, tools, machinery. It has to leave in a vehicle, which makes the vehicle gate the first lock that matters.
- The vehicle gate. If it is held by a chain and padlock, the padlock and the chain are only as good as each other. A heavy padlock on a light chain is a light chain.
- The pedestrian gate, often forgotten because nobody uses it.
- Personnel doors set into roller shutters. Their small cylinders are easy to overlook and easy to grip.
Then the buildings
- Office door: the one with the papers, the computer and often a small safe.
- Store and workshop doors: where the tools are.
- Every door with a key that has been out with someone who no longer works there. If the business has changed hands or let staff go, changing those cylinders is the cheapest security there is.
Keys and visits
Decide who holds keys while the works is closed, write it down, and keep it to as few people as possible. Agree on someone who will go round regularly and check:
- that every gate and door is still locked and undamaged;
- that no cylinder has fresh scratches or is standing out from the door more than before;
- that each padlock is the one you left, because a padlock swapped for a look-alike lets someone come back later with its key.
When it opens again
Dust, damp and weeks of not turning do no good to a lock. Before the first full shift, try every key in every door. A cylinder that has gone stiff is easier to sort out on a quiet morning than with lorries waiting; see why stone dust stops yard locks turning.
If a country gate rather than a yard gate is your concern, there is a note on gates at the end of a partida track. For the locks of business premises in general, see the page for works, units and shops, and if someone has already got in, the burglary repair page.