The Contract Manned Guarding Industry spends a fortune on telling us how good it is. It might be a contract company claiming to have the best staff turnover rate or that it carries out more management on-site visits than any of its competitors; it might be a trade association claiming that its members maintain the accepted British Standards for the industry better than any non-members; it might even be a client claiming that their own contractor provides a better service than is available anywhere else in the market. All these claims are, almost certainly, made in good faith.
The reality is, of course, they can never be proved and herein lies a major weakness in the industry. There are, no doubt, numerous clients who have accepted current marketing material on contract manned guarding and been more than satisfied with the outcome; equally there will be a similar number of clients who will be wringing their hands in frustration because they feel they have, again, been misled by such material. So how can you take the chance element out of selecting the right contractor for your contract?
A first step is to select one of the 700+ contract manned guarding companies which voluntarily submit themselves to an annual inspection by one of the 5 UKAS bodies, appointed by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) to undertake the task. Each of these 700 + companies will receive an assessment score from the respective UKAS body. So, for the first time, the industry is able to take the chance out of the equation when you, as a client, draw up your own tender list.
The ACS Pacesetters, however, make it even easier for you in that only the top 15% in the results category of that annual inspection of the 700+ members of the ACS are eligible to join up to the exclusive ACS Pacesetters. Surely you should be eliminating any element of risk from your tender list by excluding those contract companies which, seemingly, have not qualified to join up. A really good New Year Resolution would be to make certain that your tender list comes exclusively from The ACS Pacesetters “Hall of Fame”. It must, surely, make sense.