Sector
Government & defence
Work in this sector is judged on documentation as much as on installation. The system has to be right, and it has to be provable: to an inspecting officer, in a file, years after the engineer has gone. We design and maintain security systems for government departments, public infrastructure and defence establishments, specified against the conditions in the tender and recorded so they can be verified.
In public procurement the specification is the contract, and the tender is won or lost on conformance and evidence rather than on the merits of a design. What matters is that every claim can be documented, and that the party making it has done work at this scale before.
What actually goes wrong
The system usually works. The file usually does not.
| What fails | Why it fails | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| As-built drawings never match the site | Positions moved during execution and nothing was updated afterwards. | An inspection compares the drawing to the wall and the two disagree. The system may be fine; the record is not. |
| The tender specified a make, the site has something else | An equivalent was approved verbally during execution and never recorded in writing. | You cannot prove the substitution was authorised. Neither can the officer who authorised it, because he has been transferred. |
| The certification the site was built to is no longer the certification that applies | Most of what is installed across the country predates the current requirements. It was compliant, correctly procured, and passed inspection at the time. | Nobody has counted what is affected. The first time it comes up is at an inspection, an audit or a renewal, and by then it is a finding rather than a plan. |
| The AMC lapsed between one sanction and the next | Renewal fell into a new financial year and the file moved between desks. | Months with no cover, on a system nobody was checking, and no record of what happened during them. |
| Equipment installed but never taken on charge | Handover happened; the inventory entry did not. | The item is on the wall and not on any register. It belongs to nobody, so nobody maintains it. |
The question that has no answer yet
The requirements changed. The equipment did not.
Most of the electronic security installed across government and public infrastructure in this country was procured before the current certification requirements existed. It was specified correctly, tendered correctly and passed inspection at the time. Nothing was done wrong.
But the standard an installation is judged against today is not the standard it was built to, and almost nobody has an inventory of what that means for their own site: which devices, which make, which year, and which of them a current inspection would question.
That is not a procurement problem and it is not solved by a tender. It starts with knowing what is actually on the wall, device by device, and what each one would be measured against now.
We produce that inventory. What is done with it afterwards is a departmental decision, and it is not ours to make.
Get an inventory of what is actually installedWhat we carry here
- Surveillance
- Perimeter, approach, entry, internal circulation and critical rooms
- Certification and make recorded per device, not just per order
- Retention and export documented as a procedure that survives a transfer
- Access control
- Zones defined against the establishment's own categorisation, not a floor plan
- Every credential attributable to a person and to an authority
- Records retained and producible on demand
- Fire & life safety
- Detection, alarm and interlocks, tested and recorded rather than certified once
- Test records maintained as a file
- Documented so an inspection can verify rather than take our word
- Networking
- Security systems on their own segment, separated from every other network
- Attribution, logging and residency decided at design stage
- Where recordings physically sit, answered before anybody asks
- Public address and announcement
- Canteens, married accommodation, assembly areas and any space where people gather in numbers
- Zoned so an announcement reaches the area that needs it, in the order it needs it
- Specified to be understood, not only to be heard: a system people cannot make out is a system that does not work
Replacing equipment on a phased programme so a live facility comes into line with STQC and DPDP without a shutdown, and so that what replaces it can be shown to comply, not just claimed to.
Building management and AV beyond announcement are specified where the establishment requires them.
The same six stages
All six apply here, and the first carries more weight than in any other sector.
- 01 Outside the gate Standoff distance drives the whole design. Detection leads and cameras verify, not the other way round, because the decision has to be made before anything reaches the boundary.
- 02 Entry The decision was taken before the vehicle arrived. Pre-authorisation is the system; the barrier is only its last step.
- 03 Inside the building Circulation between buildings and within them, and the routes between areas of different categorisation.
- 04 Who goes where Zoning against the establishment's own categories, with every credential attributable to a person and to an authority.
- 05 Work areas Detection, alarm, interlocks and announcement, across occupied buildings and accommodation.
- 06 Control room Where all of it arrives. Its measure is whether the person on duty tonight can produce what tomorrow's inspection asks for.
Year seven
Everybody who knew this system will be posted. We will still be here.
The officer who wrote the requirement moves on. The one who approved the equivalent moves on. The engineer who commissioned it leaves the contractor. The person trained at handover is transferred twice.
Nothing has failed. But there is nobody left on site or on the file who can say why a thing was specified the way it was, what was substituted and with whose approval, or what has been tested since.
That is what we are for. We hold the record, we know what is on your wall and why, and when an inspection asks a question the answer does not depend on who is currently posted there. The file is the thing that is never maintained, and maintaining it is the job.
We are the continuity. That is the whole offer in this sector.
Also on this
Find out what is actually installed, and what it would be measured against now.
We assess the site device by device, record make, model, certification and condition against what was specified, and give you a signed condition report.
The assessment is chargeable, quoted against the site, and adjusted in full against the first year if you take cover. Where cover is not taken, the fee covers our team’s time on site and the report we leave behind, and the report is yours either way.
Chargeable, and adjusted in full if you take cover.
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