Ian Paton, security and risk manager at Sims Group UK, described at the recent Security TWENTY 13 event at the Forest of Arden Hotel near Birmingham how the UK-wide recycling company – which turns over £1 billion – is guarding its metal from thieves.
The Scot – who began by joking that he is bilingual – and former police officer was last in Professional Security as a security man at building trade supplies chain Travis Perkins, bringing in remote monitoring. The former retail loss security man, who joined Sims just over a year ago, started with what he termed ‘a blank canvas – it’s a great experience’. He has been bringing in IP CCTV in a similar way to Travis Perkins. The 62 Sims sites around the UK recycle not only the main metals such as copper – well-known as attractive to thieves because of the high price of used metal on the world market – but plastics and household electrical goods for recycling under the European WEEE rules, and asset management and data destruction of laptops and computer servers, for clients such as banks and the Ministry of Defence. Like varied businesses, such as the railways and utilities, Sims and other metal recyclers have suffered what Ian called ‘quite horrendous’ thefts. The value of non-ferrous metals stacked outdoors can be ‘scary’, he added. Sims is a growing business, and by buying smaller yards can find itself with under-protected premises. There has not been centralisation of security budgets, so that many of those 62 sites have made local arrangements for guarding, some with security officers with dogs – ‘I am not sure which were the more scary, the guards or the dogs,’ he joked. Likewise the company has had multiple CCTV and alarm suppliers; and hence various equipment.
As Ian has said before, he argued that security products such as fences and CCTV have not changed much, over the years. He said that he did not like passive infra-red detectors (PIRs), because they do not tell you what the alarm is. That said, in a control room, where an operator is viewing many screens, there is the matter of human fallibility – an intruder may only be visible for a short time, and may be missed. What then did Ian do? He reviewed the security needs of the business, presented a ‘Vision 2015’ plan to the board, and started with some trial sites. As he recalled, he had been security solutions manager for Northampton-based Travis Perkins, with some 1800 sites. “I had been involved in bringing all the sites to in-house monitoring and use of video analytics; I wanted to bring that in; and some of the suppliers I had used. We started looking at monitoring off-site; my vision was that by the end of 2015 all sites would be monitored off-site; to do that we would get rid of security guards.” That said, some sites would always need guards; but on some sites guards might be part of the problem – if they were kidnapped or tied up, for example. Ian gave the scenario of a site with non-ferrous metals worth millions of pounds. If a couple of ‘heavies’ spoke to the guard and ‘offered’ £100 for each of his legs that they would not break, it might be an ‘offer’ the guard could not refuse.
Ian described video analytics as similar to motion detection, ‘but without the false alarms. “I am very much into video analytics; I have used it for a couple of years and I really think it is the way forward. Recycling yards do get wildlife – foxes, dogs or cats – but normally the analytics can tell between wildlife, a vehicle or a person. That is, video analytics (VA) works by identifying and putting a coloured box on screen around what is moving, whether a walker or car. You put cameras at the perimeter; or, Ian prefers, on a building, so that if someone wants to attack the cameras, you see them coming, and you have an alarm. You can turn alarms on by time of day; you might not want alarms by day, when the yard is busy, but at night you would want to know if people were walking along the road by the perimeter; and would be really worried if anyone came into the ‘inner zone’. The advantage of VA; you did not need to use such strong fencing, and only have to challenge trespassers. As for whether VA causes many false alarms, or so many – thousands – that it becomes impossible to trust and use, Ian spoke of a typical evening having three or four activations, ‘and quite often that’s a key-holder fault, because they are supposed to contact the control room before they come in, in the morning, and turn the alarm off’. Ian is using IP cameras connected to VA, for example at weigh-bridges, giving an image of the transaction of weighed metal, and the customer; or, giving an overview of the area; ANPR cameras taking number plates at entrances and exits; and in non-ferrous warehouses, a smoke detection product that can flood the space with smoke if triggered by movement out of hours when an alarm is set. If the warehouse is broken into, the monitoring centre would give a verbal warning first, so that the smoke-cloaking device is not discharged without reason. Police, Ian added, are buying into such systems and Sims are to allow police to use their database. The IP CCTV is not only for security or loss prevention but for general management; if the CCTV shows an issue at one site, Sims can alter it at the other sites. Or (as in a casino?) the weighbridge has a link to the monitoring centre so that CCTV of a transaction can be played to a customer, to settle any customer query. Ian summed up: “I am a great believer in using technology. Technology is advancing tremendously nowadays. Some are scared to use it. As far as I am concerned, I am very fortunate that I am with a company that allows me to use technology, and as technology advances, so will the company. I want to be one of the people that make it happen.”
