INNOVATIVE site security company Safer Security Group is on a mission to significantly improve site security technology and help combat the theft of expensive plant.
Ryan Clark, founder and CEO revealed that tier one contractors utilising his technology has been the ‘best third-party accreditation’ he could hope for as the business aims for a £10 million turnover.
Project Plant was recently given a tour of the firm’s Port Glasgow base on the day the company finished loading up 100 of its new Safer Pod S1 products to be transported to a ‘flagship national infrastructure site’ in England.
The ‘unique’ security product, which is being utilised by the likes of Balfour Beatty, was created after Safer Security Group identified an opportunity to bring next-generation innovation to the temporary site security market. The solution improves upon existing wireless, battery-powered security systems also known as ‘daleks’, Ryan explained, adding that the Safer Pod S1 offers a ‘significant upgrade’ on the traditional technology.
The technology offers cutting-edge intelligent visual verification and comes equipped with a suite of additional detection modules for dangers such as smoke, water and carbon monoxide. Smart tilt and impact sensors immediately send out an alert if a pod is moved or tampered with.
“The concept has been about for a while – we’re certainly not the first to make a wireless intruder detection unit – but the differences between the daleks that have dominated the market over the last 10 years and the Safer Pod are significant,” Ryan explained, before revealing that the product offers higher resolution images, as well as an increased 30 metre, 360-degree intruder detection zone which is constantly scanned for threats.
Other features include next-generation live spectrum analysis to distinguish threats and drastically reduce false alarms, high-intensity sounders, signal jamming detection to alert Safer Scotland’s 24-hour control room to any attempts to jam wireless communications channels, and an app which allows increased client control of the Safer Pod S1, all of which can be managed via an app allowing the client to arm, disarm and view activity. The pod comes equipped with battery and solar technology, providing complete autonomous deployment year-round.
Ryan said construction companies, in particular, have ‘bought into the Safer Pod’, with it answering a lot of issues they had experienced with site security daleks – namely poor image quality and missed detections due to poor sensor quality.
Firms are also warier about the risk that comes with deploying lone worker security guards to protect remote sites. The Safer Pod S1 detects intruders, sends out a 120db alarm, and alerts the Safer Scotland 24-hour manned control room so they can respond accordingly with a suitable amount of manpower and police backup.
Ryan highlighted the ruthless nature of plant theft. “If you’ve got people breaking into a site to steal plant that’s worth a few hundred thousand pounds, and you’ve got a security guard standing between them and that machine, there’s a very serious risk to the safety of the security guard. Whereas if you’ve got a Safer Pod to protect the plant, the risk of personal injury to a lone worker is zero.
“We’re deploying these units to places that just wouldn’t be safe for a physical security guard to be positioned on their own.”
Despite now having bases in Paisley, Port Glasgow and London, the firm was initially operated with no proprietary technology of its own, with it originally focusing on re-hiring partnerships with other firms and monitoring stations before the decision was made to launch its own line of products.
Admitting that it’s ‘incredible’ how much the business has grown since its 2016 launch, Ryan said he credits much of it to having an ‘innovative’ team empowered to pitch ideas and a high level of customer service which he believes is imperative to the company’s long-term success.
“I spotted that there was an opportunity to create a service-centric security business that uses technology to deliver a security service, rather than just solely renting security products like a plant hire business,” Ryan added, citing great customer service, ease of ordering the equipment, and the way complaints are dealt with as being essential components to ensuring repeat business.
“In this niche of the security industry, because it’s temporary site security, you can only be successful if you’re able to get the repeat orders so you have to have great customer service otherwise you might win the first order, but you won’t get the second,” he explained. The firm revealed that it currently has larger models of the Safer Pod in development, with Ryan revealing that the ‘sky is the limit’ in terms of how advanced the concept can become.
“Unfortunately, there’s always going to be criminals that look to make a living from breaking into sites, stealing plant, and selling it on,” Ryan said. “Such criminals typically target the lowest hanging fruit and our approach has always been that we need to make the sites we protect as hard a target as possible and that’s exactly what the Safer Pod S1 was designed to do.”
