Issuing of keys

Anonymous

This happened to one of my team on a college site. He mislaid the key having been given it casually by staff there. The financial folk on site threatened immediate legal action for damages in excess of £100,000 and went straight to panic mode.

We found the key. the college has been forced to review its policy on issuing master keys.

My view, if they issue you with them, you cannot be held acountable unless agreed by contract. If this was in a contract however, I would refuse to allow my engineers to receive the keys, our insurers would go daft!!

Tony Johnstone
Member - 1 post

You gents are not the only ones to have been worried witless by master key loss. I have seen someone loose their job through trying to be helpful.

Suspect the only answer is do not accept them - ask for an escort.

Hugh Bruce-Watt - Pinsent Masons
Online advisor - 5 posts

Presumably you need to have master keys to carry out your contractual duties. If those keys were inappropriately used by your company's employees or lost by one of them leading to loss or damage at the premises there are two headings under which the company could be liable to the site owner:-

1. under contract if the damage amounted to a breach of the company's service contract

2. in tort if the company, an employee or anyone for whom the company was legally responsible had acted negligently or criminally and that negligence or criminal act had led to the loss in question.

In short, it is likely that your company would be liable for loss and damage arising as a result of inappropriate use of keys although the extent of the company's and an employee's liability in either case would depend on the circumstances in which the loss or damage had occurred.

The issue is one of balancing risk. You could seek to include disclaimers in your contract terms which excluded all liability for loss resulting from misuse of keys although this is unlikely to be acceptable to customers and therefore you may only be able to limit liability to specific events and/or to an upper monetary value. The practical answer would be to endeavour to limit your liability to the level and extent of your insurance.

To the extent you cannot obtain insurance and a customer still requires you to accept risk you could implement practical processes to protect yourself - eg detailed "vetting" of your employees and (as already suggested) systems for signing keys in and out and the provision of an escort. You could possibly also limit your liability by specifying that you would have no responsibility for items in the buildings that one would not expect to find - eg very valuable items in a student hall of residence where the university can make disclaimers to its students and where students can themselves insure their belongings.

I think the starting point for producing a set of standard terms dealing with this issue is a discussion with your insurers.

Anonymous

Risk assessment can be very difficult - particularly with electronic locking systems. "Master key" access in some systems can mean almost unlimited ability to foul things up. (throughout the entire property portfolio - not just one building)

It is not reasonable to expect an FM operative to understand all the nuances of master key access. It is therefore wrong to place him in that situation.

The responsibility should remain with the site management - its their system, they specified it, they (hopefully) understand it.

Specify the access required (room numbers ?), use the method statement to specify the precautions to be used. Ensure that ms is approved - use the covering letter to disclaim liability outside that scope. Should all fit in a simple procedure you need for HSE anyway.

Needs the lawyers to refine it - but how on earth can you be held liable for a risk outside your field - surely "due care", "everything reasonably practicable" and the "Clapham omnibus" apply here ?