Whose testimony should you trust? Every security company is going to claim to be the best at what it does – for example, a contract company might claim to have the best staff turnover rate or to carry out more management on-site visits than any of its competitors. A trade association might claim that its members maintain the accepted British Standards for the industry better than any non-members. Even a client might claim that their contractor provides a better service than is available anywhere else in the market. And there will always be happy clients and unhappy clients.
Whilst these claims are almost certainly made in good faith, they can also never be proved - a major weakness of the manned guarding industry.
However, the security of your business should not be something that is just left to chance. Therefore, the first step is to choose a Security Industry Authority (SIA) approved contractor. These are contract manned guarding companies which have voluntarily submitted themselves for an annual inspection by one of 5 UKAS inspection bodies appointed by the SIA to carry out the task.
Each of these companies will have received an assessment score from their UKAS body. They must reach a score of zero to receive ACS (Approved Contract Scheme) accreditation. Currently there are 753 of these companies. The current maximum score is +174 points. Choosing a company with ACS accreditation removes the element of chance from your selection process when you, as a client, draw up your tender list. The aim of the Approved Contractor Scheme is to raise performance standards and to assist the private security industry in developing new opportunities.
But this still leaves a very large number of contract security guarding companies for you to choose from. To make it easier for you, look for a contract manned guarding company that is a member of ACS (Approved Contract Scheme) Pacesetters. ACS Pacesetters is arguably the only genuine benchmark in Contract Manned Guarding. This is because only the top 15% of the 753 ACS members are eligible to join up – thus well and truly “splitting the field”. This means that currently, there are only 113 contract manned guarding companies from across the UK eligible to join ACS Pacesetters. Drawing up a tender list with names only from the ACS Pacesetters “Hall of Fame” removes any element of risk by excluding those contract companies which have not qualified to join up. All members of ACS Pacesetters achieved at least +108 in their most recent annual inspection.
Kingdom is a member of Pacesetters, and our score puts us in the top 3% of Pacesetter members. Pacesetters members are described as “companies, both national and regional, that have proved they are the best in class. Quite simply, as a client, would you want to select a company to tender for your security contract which was not in the top 15% of the ACS scoring system? It surely has to be the safest route”. To find out more about Kingdom’s security services, please click here to visit our website.
