July 30, 2010

FEATURE | Site services

High-tech surveillance protects construction sites from thieves

PETER KENTER

correspondent

In a tight economy more than ever, it’s a given anything not nailed down or locked up on a site will disappear.

To combat theft of high demand items like copper wire and excavators, construction companies are turning to a number of solutions, from high-tech surveillance and human guards, to man-and-dog patrols.

The key to foiling construction thefts is to positively identify crimes in progress and have the alleged perpetrators arrested before they can make off with stolen goods, says Joe Wilson, President and CEO of Sonitrol Canada, which offers site security services across the country.

SONITROL

Cameras at these West Coast sites paid off big time in theft prevention and arrests.

The company offers high-tech surveillance monitors to detect heat and motion and send images to live operators, who call police responders.

“Having a human analyzing the data is critical,” he says.

“Without that, you’re only taking home movies of construction site thefts.”

Wilson says 98 per cent of alarms, industry wide, turn out to be false which has resulted in police refusing to answer alarm-only calls in many locations.

With a human monitoring the cameras there are no false alarms, he says.

“We’re alerted to look at a particular camera in about three seconds. If it’s only a skunk, we know it’s a skunk,” says Wilson, boasting of a response rate of three to four minutes.The most common construction site thefts the company encounters are committed by “bicycle bandits” who steal extension cords for copper content, or lighter tools, such as pneumatic drills.

Professional thieves are more likely to steal Bobcat tractors or large metal items for recycling.

“It’s not only the cost of replacing these items that’s important,” says Wilson. “The next morning you have five or six guys standing around with nothing to do.”

Wilson says human guards are more expensive than electronic monitoring and are prone to inattentiveness or sleeping on the job.

Case, in point, he says was an incident around the time of the Vancouver Olympics.

His firm was monitoring a site on Vancouver’s waterfront near the Olympic cauldron when thee customer informed Sonitrol it would temporarily suspend the service, hiring a human guard instead.

“The customer thought that there would be too many false alarms resulting from people jumping the fence,” says Wilson. “We insisted on arming up the Sonivision cameras. When the guard fell asleep, we caught someone climbing the crane and stripping off his clothes before he got onto the boom.”

If thieves are caught on camera, Wilson makes an example of them by posting video footage of foiled construction-site thefts, a la TV’s COPS, on the company’s web site.

He also advises customers to prosecute thieves after they’re apprehended and charged to deter future thefts.

On the low-tech side, but no less formidable, Llewellyn Security provides human/dog teams to patrol customer sites throughout Southern Ontario.

Ian Mitchell, general manager of the company, says the effectiveness of security measures as a deterrent to theft is largely determined by media portrayals.

“The security guard doesn’t inspire a whole lot of concern among thieves,” he says. “They’re portrayed by the media as the guy asleep over his lunch bucket, or the victim who gets chunked over the head. That same media will present a dog as something you can’t outrun or outfight. Thieves would rather go someplace else than hassle a man-dog team.”

Mitchell’s company uses primarily Dobermans in its force of 60 guard dogs because they project an image upsetting to thieves.

“The Doberman in North America is the original Hound of Hell,” he says. “A German Shepherd is pictured as a friendly furry protector, while Rottweilers are thought of as biker dogs—they don’t have the image for it.”

The company is “about two generations away” from breeding its own guard dog line, best suited to the Canadian climate.

Man-dog teams are ideal to patrol construction sites, he says, because the dog provides a deterrent to thieves, while lending a measure of comfort to guards who feel more comfortable with canine back-up.

Dogs are also quick and agile, easily outpacing would-be thieves who try to lose their trackers among construction equipment and stacks of building materials.

Mitchell notes the thefts most difficult to foil are those by insiders.

“No man-dog team or no electronic measure can pick up a loss that happens from within,” he says. “Fellow workers are the best security a site can offer by helping each other stay honest.”

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