Tell us about the Old Truman Brewery.
In the mid-90s, the property’s landlord, Zeloof Partnership, began converting the 10-acre site from a depressed patch of vacant, derelict former brewery buildings, warehouses and yards into a thriving retail, dining, office, leisure and event space complex housing more than 250 businesses.
It’s a pretty massive place. We’ve got some twenty buildings that average about three floors per building, and all told we’ve got 400 offices. There’s a lot going on here, day and night.
What does your job entail?
I’ve worked for Zeloof Partnership, LLP, which operates the facilities, for around ten years, since early 2011 as Estate Manager, which has me in charge of about 50 people, two thirds of whom are cleaning and the rest security personnel. I’m kind of the head of the complaint department. Mostly, I’ll get a call from a tenant telling me that a piece of a ceiling collapsed, a window isn’t clean, a floor is dirty, a pipe burst, or that kind of thing.
What kind of security issues do you face?
Worst case is I’ll get a call saying that a tenant’s office was broken into and a laptop of other piece of equipment is missing, though that’s rare, especially nowadays. Unfortunately, even with the best security system, with a place this spread out and because there’s a lot of nightlife here with clubs, you can’t be everywhere. Our biggest concern is people from outside coming here and breaking or vandalizing something.
What brought about the switch to Guard1 Plus?
We’d been using a different system which we weren’t that happy with. It just wasn’t very sophisticated and was very cumbersome. You’d have to dock the equipment into a docking station, press print, and go through every one of a huge stack of pages to find something out. You’d do it one day, maybe two days in a row, and then miss a day. So the patrol officers would miss an entire patrol one day and notice they hadn’t been asked to explain so they began to feel there were no consequences for missing a patrol. Very inefficient and unreliable and frankly, it made for some awful security.
How did you hear about Guard1 Plus?
One of our managers had a meeting with a representative from the company, who introduced the system to him. Now, we just dock the PIPEs into the downloader and in minutes I’m able to check the rule exception reports, which instantly tell me if any assignments have been missed. It’s enabled us to bring security up to standard.
How have your patrol personnel reacted to the system?
As expected, some were not too happy about it. In those cases, we showed them door and said leave if you want to. The result of getting Guard1 Plus is the lazy patrol officers have left on their own or been let go, and the good ones are still here. So what it’s done is helped us eliminate bad apples and given us a terrific patrol force. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.
How long does it take for officers to complete a round?
It depends. We’ve got four basic rounds, and all of them are fixed route. One is indoors only, one is inside and out, and the other two are entirely outdoors. Some rounds take half an hour, others can take a few minutes. The main building is six floors, it’s massive and has about 25 buttons pretty spread out, and another is a park where they have to walk from one end to the other, and it has only two checkpoints so that doesn’t take much time.
How many PIPEs do you have?
We’ve got four and they’ve held up very, very well. And one of the most impressive things is how you can see a report that will tell you when the PIPE was dropped, what shocks it received, etc., which can clue you into whether someone is trying to abuse it. But I’d say the PIPEs have held up very well to whatever they’ve had to endure.
Would you recommend the system to other companies or use it elsewhere within the Zeloof organization?
Yes, the family that runs our facility owns others and I’m planning on introducing it to some of the others so they can start using it.
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