The sequence is the same for every customer, whether it is one camera on a yard or forty sites across an estate.
Before anything is connected
Five steps, in this order
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01
Site profile
What is there, what is normal, and what is not. Camera positions and detection lines, alarm zones, opening hours, contractors who work late, the dog that sets off zone four. This is the document the operator is reading at three in the morning, so it is worth getting right.
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02
Escalation ladder
Named contacts in the order we will try them, with the times each is available. We agree the point at which we stop calling and act — that point is a decision you make once, in daylight, rather than one an operator has to guess at.
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03
Response arrangements
Whether an activation brings a keyholder, our own response, a guarding partner, or a direct call to the emergency services — and the time we are working to. If your site sits outside our own response areas we will say so, and tell you who would attend instead.
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04
Test and go live
Signals tested end to end, operators briefed on the site, then the site goes onto watch. Nothing goes live untested.
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05
Review
Arrangements are checked periodically and after any incident. Contact lists rot faster than anything else on a site — people leave, numbers change, and nobody thinks to tell the monitoring company.
How long it takes
Most of the time is spent on the site profile and the escalation ladder, and most of that is spent waiting for contact details that only one person in the organisation actually has. A straightforward single site can be set up quickly once that information exists. An estate takes as long as it takes to do properly, site by site.
What we need from you
Very little of it is technical. What is on the site and what it is worth; when the site is empty; who should be called and in what order; what each of those people is empowered to decide at two in the morning; and anything that routinely sets the system off so we can account for it rather than call you about it every week.
What happens if it changes
Sites change. Cameras move, staff leave, a new contractor starts working late. Send us the change and we will update the profile — it takes minutes, and it is the single most useful thing you can do for your own site.
Ready to set a site up?
Tell us what is there and what worries you about it, and we will take it from the site profile onwards.