Monitoring is only worth what the arrangements behind it are worth. Most of what separates one monitoring company from another is not the equipment — it is what was agreed before anything was connected, and what happens in the minutes after a signal arrives.
The four things worth knowing
- Setting a site up
- Nothing gets connected until the arrangements are written down and agreed. The site profile, the escalation ladder, the response arrangement, and the test before it goes live.
- What happens when it goes off
- The sequence from a signal arriving to somebody attending — and what happens at each point where a human decision is made.
- Escalation and arrangements
- What we do when a contact cannot be reached, how the watch is kept up, how your information is held, and what we do about false alarms.
- What it costs
- What actually drives the price of monitoring a site, set out plainly so you can work out roughly where you sit before you speak to anyone.
Why we publish this at all
Most companies in this industry will not tell you what happens when a contact does not answer, or what they do about a site that false-alarms every other night. We would rather you knew before you signed something than found out at three in the morning.
If any of it does not match what you need, that is a useful thing to find out now. Arrangements are written per site, and they are written with you rather than handed to you.
Want to see how we would cover your site?
Tell us what is there and what worries you about it. We will tell you honestly whether monitoring is the answer.