Travis Perkins, one of the UK’s largest builders merchants operating some 450 branches nationwide, has taken control of the security coverage of 100 of its major sites.
The company has invested in the latest remote monitoring techniques and equipment to feed information back to its central monitoring station at Northampton. The station is manned during non-operating hours from 5pm to 7am by a rotating team of eight security officers employed by Travis Perkins.
The £800 million turnover company, which employs 7,000 people on sites from Plymouth to Invergordon, handles materials including decorative paving, large pieces of timber and other valuable building stock which are stored in a high-risk environment, becoming a vulnerable target at night. Although it had originally outsourced remote monitoring to a third party, Derek Turrell, one of five regional security managers employed by Travis Perkins, explains the decision to take procedures in-house.
He says: “We had a number of companies who installed the CCTV equipment for us, and the sites were monitored by third-party central stations. But after equipping some 50 sites, it became more viable economically to carry out the operation ourselves.”
Since November last year, security officers trained by Travis Perkins have been monitoring the sites. Having invested in Dedicated Micros’ DVST technology including a 16-way DM Sprite multiplexer controlling 12-14 internal and external colour cameras installed by Quadrant and ACE Security, the officers use an integrated two-way public address system to verbally warn intruders they are being monitored and recorded.
Says Turrell: “Our staff are all 100% dedicated to builders merchants’ needs and site layouts.
They are familiar with the products, strange hours and business processes. We also save money by doing it ourselves.
“We do all our own in-house training, and get some advanced training from Dedicated Micros. It’s not difficult equipment, but the officers do need four-to-six weeks training. The biggest problem is recruiting staff in Northampton, where the unemployment rate is only 3-4%. The benefits are, however, that it’s part of an integrated security solution for Travis Perkins’ branch network.”
Turrell adds that the system becomes a management tool for branch managers during office hours. “Managers now have a method of preventing theft, and if thefts do occur, the system is there to provide evidence,” he says.
Images from the system are archived for 30 days on VHS tape and have been used as evidence in several prosecutions, both for shoplifting cases inside the stores and theft from the outside yards.
The company now plans to evaluate digital equipment and is looking at the next generation of CCTV transmission.
Source
SMT
