VPS appoints Andy Brind to develop growing construction site-security business

In Jan­u­ary, a crim­i­nal gang was brought to jus­tice in a Bel­gian court over a mil­lion-euro series of crane, exca­va­tor and trail­er thefts. The haul, includ­ing £480,000 cement pump­ing truck, a £108,000 bulk tanker, and £50,000 worth of trail­ers, were stolen then resprayed, and sold to unsus­pect­ing cus­tomers across the UK and Ireland. 

Bring­ing with him 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, hav­ing worked for multi­na­tion­al Alge­co Group, Andy Brind aims to high­light the extra ben­e­fits beyond the pro­tec­tion of the plant by deploy­ing tech­nol­o­gy for build­ing site security.

The pressure of cutting costs

“In these excep­tion­al times, the con­struc­tion sec­tor is under greater pres­sure than ever before. As Brex­it and the COVID-19 lock­downs cause sup­ply short­ages and oper­a­tional delays, they are strug­gling to square the cir­cle of deliv­er­ing projects whilst cut­ting costs, and doing so all the time with­in a COVID-secure environment.” 

Andy explains,​“For exam­ple, there’s been a lot of media cov­er­age recent­ly about the pan­dem­ic dan­gers of Lon­don tubes filled with con­struc­tion work­ers going to work.”

Day and night monitoring

24/7 cam­eras and sen­sors are mon­i­tored off-site and run inde­pen­dent­ly, often with­out an exter­nal pow­er sup­ply"

“Some of these jour­neys could be reduced by deploy­ing mod­ern meth­ods of con­struc­tion, using tech­nolo­gies designed specif­i­cal­ly for the sec­tor. CCTV Smart Tow­ers, for exam­ple, could replace tra­di­tion­al secu­ri­ty guards, of which there must be thou­sands in Lon­don alone.”

“The 24/7 cam­eras and sen­sors are mon­i­tored off-site and run inde­pen­dent­ly, often with­out an exter­nal pow­er sup­ply. They could help alle­vi­ate the need for so many work­ers to trav­el on the tube, plus they can save thou­sands of pounds in secu­ri­ty budgets.”

Improving site security

VPS Site Secu­ri­ty had seen a dra­mat­ic switch from human patrols to more guard­less sys­tems in the twelve months pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, but the trend is like­ly to keep ris­ing. Recent projects have seen sav­ings of over 60% in secu­ri­ty bud­gets, pro­vid­ing an improved, more com­pre­hen­sive secu­ri­ty net over­see­ing sites 24 hours a day but at low cost.

They are work­ing strate­gi­cal­ly to increase their con­struc­tion part­ner­ships with some of the key play­ers in the mar­ket, and launch­ing addi­tion­al part­ner­ships short­ly. Their cur­rent cus­tomer base includes house­hold names in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, deploy­ing CCTV sys­tems to improve their site secu­ri­ty. 

Use of manned guards

Manned guards have always been the tra­di­tion­al main­stay approach in the build­ing sec­tor to secure dif­fi­cult sites"

VPS itself has been sup­port­ing the secu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion of sev­er­al High­ways of Eng­land Schemes and also the mas­sive Cross­Rail con­struc­tion project at Padding­ton Sta­tion, com­pris­ing five storeys, most­ly under­ground, with 83 HD CCTV cam­eras, smart ana­lyt­ics ​‘vir­tu­al’ trip­wires, and onsite monitoring. 

“Manned guards have always been the tra­di­tion­al main­stay approach in the build­ing sec­tor to secure dif­fi­cult or remote sites such as high­way con­struc­tion, and they will always be need­ed in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.”

24/7 pro­tec­tion and safe­ty

Andy says ​“But tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions have real­ly proven them­selves in recent years. So much so that, com­bined with tru­ly dra­mat­ic cost-sav­ings and bet­ter 24/7 pro­tec­tion and safe­ty, we’ve seen a def­i­nite shift towards sys­tems designed with CCTV includ­ed as the pre­ferred choice.” 

Mobile patrols may still be required, but they are seen now as much more effi­cient when deployed with the sup­port of Tow­er sys­tems, as they can help tar­get problems.