Operational support arrangements
What happens
when it goes off.
Monitoring is only worth what the arrangements behind it are worth. This is how a site is set up, who gets called, and what we do when a call is not answered.
Setting a site up
Nothing gets connected until the arrangements are written down and agreed. The sequence is the same for every customer.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Review
Arrangements are checked periodically and after any incident. Contact lists rot faster than anything else on a site — people leave, numbers change.
When we cannot reach you
An escalation ladder that ends in an unanswered phone is not an arrangement, it is a hope. Where a contact cannot be reached, the call moves down the ladder rather than stopping, and repeated failures to connect are escalated to our own on-call senior management so a person — not a process — decides what happens next.
If you are a customer and a call to us did not reach an operator, we want to know. Report it to info@echeloncic.com with the time and the number dialled, and it will be investigated against our call records.
Keeping the watch up
The control centre is manned around the clock, every day of the year. Power, communications and signal paths are arranged so that the loss of any one of them does not take the watch down with it.
Your information
Site plans, keyholder details, footage and alarm histories are held under our ISO 27001 information security management system, and Echelon is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller. Details are retained for as long as the service requires and no longer, and are not passed to anyone outside the arrangements you have agreed.
False alarms
Every activation is assessed before anyone is called out. Where a site generates repeated false activations we will come back to you with what is causing them, because a customer who stops trusting their own alarm is a worse outcome than a service call.
Arrangements out of date?
Send us your current contact list and we will update your site profile. It takes minutes and it is the single most useful thing you can do for your own site.
Update your details