One horse race is non starter!

Our exclusive article on the possible replacement of all the inspectorates has caused much industry debate.

I read with great interest the article in the May edition of this magazine about a proposed new super inspectorate to cover the whole of the industry, and whilst, on paper, it looks like a good idea there are some grave misgivings in the back of my mind.

The first thing to remember is that this is not a new idea. We had a one horse race for many years with the old NSCIA, and although the old horse tried very hard, the hurdles were placed too high and it failed to complete the course. It was later picked up, dusted down, given a new name (NACOSS) and a new battery inserted just under the tail and off it went again with a new lease of life. Unfortunately the powers that be forgot to lower the height of the hurdles and this allowed more horses to join the race, bringing us to the present field of four.

The requirements imposed upon installation companies wishing to enroll with the old NSCIA were prohibitive to say the least, with minimum numbers of engineers and separate premises and wanting to look at the accounts (as one disgruntled installer put it … “to see if we can afford to pay their fees”). They automatically discounted most, if not all, the small installers. It was seen as a slap in the face to those who failed to meet the requirements and therefore interpreted as the big boys keeping the small fry in their place.

NACOSS just took the blame

Unfortunately for NACOSS, who grew out of the old NSCIA, much of that ill feeling still exists among older installers. Many of them still wrongly blame NACOSS for restricting their businesses and taking away installations that were rightfully theirs. Let’s clarify this one: It was the insurance companies that took away your work … NACOSS just ended up taking the blame.

On the other hand, over the last few years there has been a distinct levelling of the playing field and the other inspectorate recognised installers are now far more likely to get the jobs they are capable of doing and the old adage of “join NACOSS or die” has faded into the distance.

We now have four inspectorates who are as different as chalk and cheese so the installer can choose the inspectorate that suits his needs or decide to opt out. Each inspectorate has its advocates and its enemies and the battle lines are clearly drawn in the eyes of the installer. After carefully selecting the inspectorate of their choice, most installers then become very supportive of their own inspectorate and very ‘anti’ the others, so the prospect of joining them all together and forcing an installer into “joining” the three that he rejected will be the equivalent of the red rag and the bull.

For some time there have been suggestions of the inspectorates merging and/or working together and there are some excellent points for and against. For a start, if the inspectorates got their collective heads together then they could agree on national interpretations of the standards that could be accepted across the board. The problem of course with each going its own way is that we end up with a very different set of working standards for each organisation, and that gives the police and the insurance companies a big problem: Who to accept and who to reject? They tried to sort this one out by imposing the dreaded ISO 9000 but as they are now finding it does not work in the alarm industry.

ISO 9000 works well in a factory where the boss can walk out of his office and pick up any piece of product and ask for the paperwork that goes with it. It gives tremendous traceability and control over the production line. However, give an alarm engineer a job to do and he hops in the van and is lost from both sight and control in about 15 seconds flat. He could go to the bookies, his mum’s for a cuppa or to a certain accommodating divorcee up the road who has a fetish for men in overalls … anywhere but to the job in hand, and who is to know any different? Finally, all he has to do is fake his job sheets on the way back and he has delivered a huge kick in the pants to both his boss and ISO 9000. I ask you this: How many companies large or small can afford to check on jobs that are often 50 or more miles from base?

Day trips in the company van

I’ll give you an instance – some time ago a team of four engineers were given a big factory to wire up and three weeks to do it in. It didn’t take them long to realise that they would complete within the fortnight, so, instead of finishing early they spread it over the full three weeks and took it in turns to take their wives/girlfriends for day trips to that metropolis of merriment – Blackpool – in the company van. The company, by the way, is very proud of its commitment to ISO 9000.

ISO 9000 works by checking the paperwork. So, provided the errant engineer has filled the job sheets in correctly and the secretary files them in the right file, the company passes the inspection and gains ISO 9000 recognition.

It’s very much like going to a football match and watching the referee. Provided he made all the right decisions, it was a good game. The two teams may have played like demented Wombles with their boots on the wrong feet but it was a good game ‘cos the ref blew his whistle in all the right places.

I rest my case … ISO 9000 does not work in our industry, and it never has and never will.

ISO 9000 was always intended to be voluntary and should never have been made a “condition” of trading. So, as you can imagine, I was cheered up no end when Security Installer’s article stated that the new inspectorate was “proposing the relaxation of the need for ISO 9000 at certain levels”. At long last someone is seeing sense. Unless they are just saying that to keep the smaller inspectorates happy! I wonder?

The main problem with merging or working together is that the old rule of dominance takes over and the larger more dominant organisation eventually swallows up the lesser and we are back to a one horse race. A new super inspectorate to oversee the industry would probably fall straight into that trap.

Money speaks … as usual

Another problem would be: Who pays how much into the scheme? Would NACOSS, as the larger organisation, be expected to pay more, or would all the fees be the same and Integrity 2000, the smallest inspectorate be expected to pay one quarter?

I think the prospect of that is a non-starter so it is inevitable that the larger member with its larger voice and its larger cash input will superimpose its will over the rest. There have been suggestions that it could be set up so that each individual inspectorate could keep its identity and ways of working and the new inspectorate would just be an umbrella organisation to speak for everybody but we already have JSIC (Joint Security Industry Council) so do we need another?

We could ask: Why, if they are all going to keep their own identity, do we need an extra layer of bureaucracy on top of what we have already got? And who pays for it all? The costs would certainly have to cascade down to the subscribing installer. Anyone who has done a stint on the stands at IFSEC and the like will have come across characters that accuse the inspectorates of “creaming off their profits”, so isn’t that just what we could say about a new Super Inspectorate with a new Super Executive on a new Super Salary, not to mention the new Super Staff that would have to be employed.

I know Graeme Dow was quoted in the article as saying “we know that some parties will try to sink the new ship before it floats” but I have to point out what anyone in the shipbuilding industry will tell you – if you build a ship that is top heavy it will turn turtle and sink as it slides off the slipway, and that we do not want … however good the idea or intentions. (I have to say at this point that I have known Graeme for many years and he holds my utmost respect and I value his opinions as much as any man in the industry but this time Graeme – I am not so sure.)

The article also said that a study was carried out during 1998/9, which concluded that the security industry is held in poor regard by the end users. I have done a quick phone round of the companies I inspect and none of mine have been approached, and I also asked some of my fellow inspectors and they came up with the same answer.

John Philips, one of my inspector colleagues pointed out “It depends what questions and what companies they asked”. That is a very good point so perhaps Security Installer could publish a list of companies approached and a copy of the questionnaire. Then, and only then, can we comment on the results of that survey. In the meantime, judging by the number of cups of tea and the sheer volume of biscuits my fellow inspectors and I have been asked to consume, I can only conclude that the alarm installation industry is held in very high regard by the end user. By the way, we inspectors get to see around 600 end users a year each.

So, here we are, 20-plus years on from the old NSCIA facing the prospect of all combining to make one big Super Inspectorate that will look after the needs of all. But isn’t that what the old NSCIA tried to do? And failed.

What about freedom of choice?

And aren’t we missing one important point in all this – what gives us (and by us I mean we of the four inspectorates, ACPO and the insurance companies) the right to tell Joe Bloggs Alarms who he is going to join, and how much he is going to have to pay?

Aren’t we taking things a little too much for granted sitting in our Ivory Towers making rules and imposing charges on the vast multitude of small businesses many of whom have only one intention in life – to do a good job and offer top class service in order to make enough to live on. I accept that we have to make some rules and set minimum standards to protect the public, but is piling on layer after layer of bureaucracy and imposing expensive things like ISO 9000 the best way to do it? I have my doubts.

The inspectorates are now getting on with each other better than ever before and the industry in general is settling down to a pattern that is acceptable, if not actually loved and cherished. It therefore stands to reason that any new overseeing body will have to, more or less, leave each inspectorate to its own devices and be reasonably economical to run – or they will upset the applecart.

They are going to have to tread very carefully. If an installer has chosen to join one outfit only to find that he is now controlled by the one he rejected, he is going to be very unhappy.

Freedom of choice is what our fathers fought the last war for. Take away that freedom of choice and we are back to a cartel that will carve up the industry, as it likes.