The Kenton Brothers Glossary

By Neal Bellamy, IT Director at Kenton Brothers

You know how you get into a room full of doctors and they start talking their own language? Pneumothorax this and Craniectomy that. Well, security folks have their own language too. It certainly doesn’t take years of college to understand, but to the uninitiated, it can sound like Greek. At Kenton Brothers, we have our own dialect of security language. I wanted to take a moment to help initiate those of you who are interested.

The Kenton Brothers Security  Glossary

It didn’t grow there. – Papa Kenton used to use this to “encourage” the technicians to think about how the problem became the problem and then fix it. Also known as “Figure it out”. (See our story about the McGyver Award.)

Handing – The way we use to describe how a door swings on its hinges. There are four handings, Left Hand, Right Hand, Left Hand Reverse and Right Hand Reverse. The easiest way I’ve heard it explained is: from the locked (secured) side of the door, If the hinges are on your right and the door pushes away from you, it is a Right Hand door. A door with hinges on the left and pulls towards you is a Left Hand Reverse. Door handing helps us determine the right locking hardware for the door.

Secure side of the door – Describes the side of the door that has the key. It would be on the “outside” of the room or building. You have to find the secure side of the door before you can hand the door (see above on handing). This seems like a simple task, but in larger buildings with multiple hallways, it’s not always easy. The secure side of the door will receive a reader and the other side of the door will receive the request to exit.

Request to Exit (REX) – A device, usually a motion detector, that tells the access control system that someone is getting ready to leave the unsecured side of the door. We use a REX to tell the access control system that the opening of the door is “Authorized”. Using a reader is the other way we can “authorize” the door opening. If a door is opened without being “Authorized”, The access control system will send an alarm called a Door Forced.

Company Culture

SPICED ICE – This is the acronym for our core values. The acronym stands for Service, Quality, Partnerships, Integrity, Continuous Learning, Ethics, Dependability, Innovation, Customer Focus, and Employee Focus.

The KB Way – How we embody our “Customer Focus” core value. It can mean a lot of different things, but it’s basically the way we treat you, our customer. We make sure to introduce ourselves when we arrive on site. Then we explain what we’re going to do, shake you hand, look you in the eye, and make sure that you’re satisfied with the result of our visit. We strive to also leave some “Comeback sauce”.

Comeback Sauce – Something we can do for the customer that isn’t necessarily expensive, but makes a large impact. It can be as simple as fixing a hinge when re-keying a door, or checking to see if there’s something else we can do to improve the customer’s day.

McGyver Award – An award we present to the technician who best demonstrates the ability to fix whatever is in front of them, regardless of the tools/parts they may have available at the time. This award is named for the hit 1980s show where the protagonist could get out of any jam with a paperclip and his trusty Swiss army knife. A McGyver award recipient doesn’t have to be told “It didn’t grow there”.

Favorite Slogans

Be Prepared – We’ve repurposed the Boy Scout motto. Our customers generally tell us the symptoms of the underlying cause. It’s our duty to think about what causes correlate to the symptom that’s being described. And then we need to take all the tools and parts necessary to get the customer up and running as soon as possible. Technicians who demonstrate the “Be Prepared” attitude, don’t need to McGyver the solution.

Rocking the Blue – We all wear the “KB Blue” as a sign of our pride in being part of the KB team. Being part of this company’s 120 year history is a big part of why we get up in the morning. Fun Fact: KB Blue wasn’t always blue. It used to be plum… (Shhh.)

Polish the Diamond – This is our focus for 2018. We’ve been working on our policies and procedures to make it easy to do business with us. We reorganized the business internally to give our customers more communication, with a more focused team. We have realigned processes for our external and internal customers to make everything flow more smoothly. There will always be work to do, but we’ve already made some large changes, and will continue to do more throughout the year.

All Secure – is our battle cry, our focus. We use this term to focus the team on making sure our customers are secure.

IP Convergence – The shift in the security industry that takes access control and video surveillance from proprietary wiring to the network. The IT network is ubiquitous in businesses. Placing the security devices on the network saves money and increases their effectiveness.  Each device now has computing power that can be used for detection and decision making.