Streamlined Supply

Stage One of the COX Architecture-designed Stromlo Forest Anglican College’s Early Learning Centre is complete – and it’s a clear example of what’s possible with single-source door and hardware supply. Instead of coordinating separate orders for framing, doors, and hardware across multiple suppliers, the entire package for this project came from one source, matched and sequenced before it reached site. The result shows what streamlined supply actually looks like in practice, not just on paper.

Matched supply, not a patchwork

Series 9000 partition framing, narrowstile aludoors and door hardware were all sourced, machined, and coordinated through a single supplier. That matters more than it sounds: on most commercial fitouts, framing, doors, and hardware come from separate suppliers, each with their own lead times, colour batches, and tolerances – and any mismatch between them becomes the contractor’s problem to solve on site. On the SFAC ELC project, there was no chasing separate suppliers for lead times, and no surprises on site with mismatched materials, because every component was specified, ordered, and delivered as one co-ordinated package.

Pre-machined before it leaves the factory

Aluminium doors for the project were machined in-house on our CNC and colour-matched to the partition system before delivery, with locks pre-fitted to the height specified in the brief. For the contractor, that’s measuring, matching, and drilling that never has to be built into the install program – hardware fitment and finish quality are locked in before the doors arrive on site, not worked out once they’re there.

The Result

The outcome is a door and hardware package that installs the way it was designed to, on the schedule the contractor planned for: efficient to install and functional from day one. It’s a good illustration of why single-source door and hardware supply is worth specifying upfront – particularly on projects like schools and early learning centres, where handover dates are fixed and there’s little room for on-site rework.

If your next project needs framing, doors, and hardware to work as one coordinated system rather than a patchwork of separate orders, talk to us early – it’s easier to build efficient supply in from the start than to fix mismatches once they’re on site.