Budget limitations are a constant in construction and renovation, especially in school districts, municipal buildings, and publicly funded projects. When resources get tight, owners are often forced to make tough choices between critical upgrades and cost-saving compromises. Access control, despite being essential for safety and future-readiness, frequently lands on the chopping block.
It makes sense in the short term. Electrified hardware and full security systems aren’t cheap, and when you’re staring down a long list of must-haves, the temptation is to kick the can down the road. But cutting the infrastructure entirely doesn’t merely defer cost, it creates a much more expensive problem later on.
Install the Path Now, Activate Later
Frame Frog offers an alternative that gives owners room to breathe financially without closing the door on future upgrades. By integrating a clean, UL-rated wiring pathway into the door frame during construction, Frame Frog allows you to plan for electrified openings even if the security hardware won’t be installed right away.
In practice, this means you can install Frame Frog in every opening you think might eventually need access control—say, 100 classroom doors—and only electrify 30 of them now. The remaining 70 can be activated later, during summer improvements, through capital reinvestment funds, or using grant money. The infrastructure is already there. You’re simply putting it to work when the timing makes sense. This isn’t speculative planning. It’s a defined pathway with clear ports, ready for power and data the moment you’re ready to expand.
This approach helps keep your current project on budget while giving your facilities team the freedom to expand functionality over time without ripping out walls or replacing frames.
The Cost of Waiting Is Always Higher
If you’ve ever tried to add access control after the building is complete, you already know what it involves. Walls have to be opened, conduit has to be added, and fishing wire through an installed frame, especially one that’s fire-rated, is rarely smooth, fast, or code-compliant.
Those efforts are more than just frustrating. They’re expensive. And because they’re done reactively, they often lead to inconsistent results that create new maintenance headaches later.
Installing Frame Frog from the start avoids all of that. It’s a low-cost safeguard that gives you wiring access points before the rest of the building closes in around them. That means no change orders, no destructive retrofit work, and no guesswork for the people maintaining the building years down the line.
Prooving That Fits Real Budgets
What makes Frame Frog especially useful for owners is how well it fits the reality of funding cycles. You might not have the budget to electrify every door on day one but you might have it in phases, spread across years. Frame Frog is designed to support exactly that kind of phased implementation.
Once installed, the pathway is there whether you need it in six months, six years, or sometime in between. It’s a smart way to plan for evolving safety requirements, expanding facilities, or simply making the most of annual improvement dollars.
In the end, you’re not just building for today. You’re building for everything that comes next. With Frame Frog, that doesn’t have to mean paying for it all at once.