Guarding

Cordant Security visit

by Mark Rowe

We make a return visit to Cordant Security’s head office; Cordant Security recently rebranded as Cordant Security UK Ltd earlier this year.

As with the security industry generally, some things stay the same while others inevitably change. For example, take the work of the security officer, and of the National Communication Centre which co-ordinates contractual coverage. As Phil Brewer, head of the company’s National Communications Centre, puts it: contractual coverage once was king. Now whilst it’s still important, the guarding supplier has more to make certain of. Is the officer SIA-badged and is the SIA badge valid? Are the officers working within the European Working Time Directive? (remember that?!). Are officers having the necessary rest periods, whether between shifts or following night work? Clients may also require specific hours to be worked or rest periods adhered to.

Tony Amor, SHEQ Training and Compliance Manager, adds that client’s requirements are very different to years gone by as there is an increased focus on working hours and the total hours worked. Some clients do not want officers to exceed a set number of hours, regardless of regulations. Cordant, like some others in the sector, besides meeting client specifics has to move with the times. For instance, this includes the retail sector’s move to Sunday trading and the need for additional cover to be supplied on night shifts to encompass replenishments and store refurbishments. While the retail sector has progressed to opening seven days a week with closures only on part of Sundays, corporate office hours have not changed. The job, then, of matching officers to sites does not get any easier.

Similarly there was a time when the NCC might also make sure that an individual officer was on shift; and that was that, apart from the welfare check calls. Cordant reports that they have a dedicated hotline for incidents and accident reporting, for instance if a location has a problem with its tills. Cordant will act as the link between the retail store and the maintenance company. The security firm describes that as not only providing manpower for security, but also adding real value. Of course the supply of security officers is still the bread and butter, but clients are now asking what else the security supplier can offer. That may be in the form of a help-desk service, the security supplier fielding and actioning any problems with CCTV, fire alarms, fire doors not closing, or shops running short of anti-theft tags. These helplines can be confidential lines or incident reporting whereby a client’s staff, or security officers, can ring in to report a slip or trip, a suspect package or that a shoplifter has been detained.

Within the NCC’s internal system, a list on the drop-down menu even includes ‘wild animals loose inside the site perimeter’. For example, deer may find themselves inside a fence line on an out of town logistics park and a client would rather not have a lorry hit one. Any incident reported generates an automatic email to those stakeholders who need to know, depending on the severity of the incident and whether the client has on site health and safety, which can be an extension to that site security coverage.

Inevitably just as the warehouse, distribution or retail security officer answers the call if something’s stolen or there’s an intruder, so the NCC is also a receiver of bad news. This includes when an officer can’t come into work. The security industry also has its peaks and troughs, much like the retail sector that peaks towards Christmas and suffers from a lull after the New Year. The NCC’s fundamental role is to match officers to demand.

Cordant are national key-holders for various clients and a dedicated out of hours team takes care of clients’ property needs, by attending to alarms etc. In the NCC, live news feeds are playing on the various TV screens: the contractor reports that Sky is better for bringing the news first whilst BBC is better for in-depth coverage. By keeping a watchful eye on the latest and current news, the NCC operator knows if a breaking piece of news – such as the January 2013 helicopter crash in Central London – affects any client in the vicinity, requiring re-routes, for instance. In that case the NCC will divide into two, the day-to-day running operations and the other covering of shifts, and the incident response, as clients may ask for more officers to be provided if there are protests in their vicinity, for example. The contractor used to divide its work by sector, into retail and corporate. Now it divides geographically – the North East and Scotland, Manchester and the North West, the Midlands and so on. In other words corporate officers may be expected to also carry out retail sector work. Pete Bloomfield, the NCC’s incident hotline operator, talked Professional Security through what might come to the NCC, whether checks on lone workers, or the duress procedure. That is, say criminals overpower an officer, but – in the hope that they are not rumbled and can carry on their robbery – they allow the officer to make the check call. Therefore the officer has a covert way to alert the NCC, without having to blurt out ‘robbers are here!?’.

Cordant, going back a decade or more (into its Advance days), has been an organisation ready to use technology to smooth the path of working. It’s currently trialing a hand-held device so that the key-holding response officer doesn’t have, or cannot see on a piece of paper, the code to unset a site alarm (in the dark, perhaps), as that runs the risk of intruders overpowering that officer and then being able to identify the code. Imagine the greater risk of the key-holder with perhaps hundreds of keys and such accompanying paperwork in his vehicle – what if criminals were to come by all of those in one go?! The trial will establish that the response officer can be sent the code on the device satisfactorily.

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