Specifying Parcel Lockers for an Apartment Community

Who this is for

Builders and developers specifying at design stage, RWA committees retrofitting an occupied community, and facility managers who inherit whatever was installed and have to run it. The decisions are the same; the freedom to change them afterwards is not. If you are at design stage, points 4 to 6 are worth more to you than anything else on the list.

Before you size anything: count what actually arrives

Every other decision depends on this one. For two weeks, record what comes into the community: roughly how many items a day, roughly what sizes, and which days spike. You are looking for the distribution and the peak, not the average.

The checklist

Volume and sizing

1. Daily volume at peak, not average — and which days those peaks fall on.
2. Size distribution. What share is envelopes and small boxes, what share is cartons, what arrives that will not fit any locker and needs a different answer.
3. Dwell time. How long items actually sit before collection, because that decides how much of the bank is available on any given morning.

Siting and services

4. Position on the courier’s natural path. A bank a courier has to detour to is a bank that gets bypassed.
5. Power and network at that position, confirmed rather than assumed — and whether the site supports wired, Wi-Fi or 4G.
6. Indoor, covered or exposed, since that changes the unit specification and is decided at survey.

Access and residents

7. Which credential residents already carry. Reusing one beats introducing another.
8. A method that needs no app, for residents who will not install one and for domestic staff collecting on their behalf.
9. Courier access — how a courier who has never seen the unit completes a delivery without being registered first.

Operations and handover

10. Who holds the admin account, and what happens when that person leaves or the committee changes.
11. Uncollected-item policy. How long an item sits, who is reminded, who retrieves it and where it goes.
12. Service cover. Preventive maintenance, remote diagnostics and who attends when a lock fails on a Sunday.

Five specification mistakes that are expensive to undo

1. Sizing for the average day. The bank is then full exactly when it is most needed, and residents conclude it does not work.
2. Siting for construction convenience. A position that suited the build programme but sits off the courier’s path produces a bank nobody uses and a mailroom that never closes.
3. All compartments the same size. A uniform grid wastes volume on envelopes and refuses cartons. Mix is the point.
4. App-only access. It excludes the residents least likely to complain through official channels and most likely to route around the system entirely.
5. No uncollected-item policy. Without one the bank silently converts into long-term storage, and effective capacity falls every month.

Questions worth asking any vendor

• What compartment mix are you proposing, and what arrival data is it based on?
• What happens during a power cut or a network outage?
• Which access methods can we assign per group, and can we change them later?
• What exactly is included in service, and what is chargeable?
• Can the bank expand later on the same siting, power and network?
• Who installs it, and is that the same team that supports it afterwards?

The answers matter less than whether the vendor can answer them specifically. Vague answers at quote stage become your problem at handover.

Frequently asked questions