Installer, manufacturer, and for the last three years president – of Euralarm the association of European manufacturers and installers of fire and security systems.
Una Riley talks to Tony Lamb.
Euralarm was founded in 1970 and its members represent around 700 companies totalling about 70 per cent of the European market. Tony handed over the reins to Dr Gustav Pfister who recently retired from Siemens. Tony is now the Vice President overall but remains President of the Security Section. He is the trade association representative for the UK security industry (BSIA). He has actively been involved with the BSIA on technical and strategic issues for many years, and has been involved in many of the main technical committees that drive the UK Security Industry. However, I think that most of you will be aware of Tony as MD of Castle Care-Tech the manufacturer of security products and the latest Euro control panel that meets the requirements of DD6662.
RAF background
I asked how Tony started. โEssentially my background is somewhat related to the forces. My father was a serving RAF officer and when I was a young man I spent quite a lot of time on his squadrons pottering around in the electronics, so I developed a love of electronics from an RAF background which is quite disciplined. I am proud to say that my father rose through the ranks to become an Air Vice Marshal in the end so he did rather well thanks to a strict work ethic that rubbed off on me.โ Tony became interested in the security industry in 1973 following a burglary at his fatherโs house! I asked as to how he started in the profession. "Funnily enough on the installation side of business instead of manufacturing. I started a small installation company but found the control equipment on the market in those days which was around early to mid 70s was not really doing what I wanted and not very reliable. So after a few skirmishes with manufacturers who just let me down and were not interested, I went to some other local companies who were suffering the same types of problem and asked them what they wanted from a control panel? They presented me with a sort of specification. It was quite a daunting spec because in those days everything was transistors and relays. I remember saying to one of the guys, you are going to need electronics the size of your office wall to fulfil that type of criteria! Ironically a few weeks later they released some of the chips from the โspace raceโ which were the first CMOS 4000 logic series and I realised I could do the job with these things. So essentially I must have spent about three years in my garden shed designing a control panel that was suitable for installations as I saw it and also for a distribution group at that time called Standfast, who were a type of franchise and had a branch near where I lived in Sunningdale. I would potter along and see them and I would show them the progress I had made so far and they would say we have to do this and we have to do that. Anyway, eventually I got it right and the local branch of Standfast became my first customer. So I rapidly moved from installation to manufacturing. After supplying the local branch I began to supply other branches within the UK โฆ it just seemed to spread by word of mouth and the product just developed from there.โ
Hands on
Having started as an installation company and not being able to offer the client a fit for purpose product and taking that acquired knowledge and moving from one sector to another is pretty astute. Tony went on: โIt also taught me one huge lesson and that was that the world out there for an engineer is totally different from the ivory tower in which sit our beloved R&D enthusiasts. Hands on experience was absolutely vital and I have never forgotten that. Even now as Managing Director of Castle Care-Tech I am still happy to go on site with customers with problems because there is nothing like seeing a situation first hand and realising how possibly woefully inadequate your product or hopefully somebody elseโs product happens to be for the job in hand." That type of empathic approach has largely been lost to business these days, as it appears that some conglomerates are so distanced from the product that they sell that there is no longer a feel for either customer or consumer. Tony went on: "As a result over the years Castle has built up a very loyal customer base that generally has very similar business ethics to the ones that we believe are important.โ I asked how an independent manufacturer competes in our global market place. "I had a very touching experience with one of our customers where a group of engineers said they had been using Castle Care Tech for a very long time and they thought that it was time for a change and they wanted to check out the opposition. The MD at this engineering meeting said, โItโs absolutely fine you can choose any manufacturer you like that you are happy with. I am completely prepared for you to do that. I just have one condition and that is that the managing director of that company must be prepared to take my phone call on a Friday at 6pm and come out to North London and crawl through some attics with me to solve a problem of my wiringโ. That was as a result of a call Iโd received several years earlier.โ Tony and I went on to talk about the various aspects of business from both the manufacturing and installation perspective. He said: โThe core driver of the industry has in many ways helped us to be successful at the level we are at. We have always said to our customers we wonโt necessarily be the cheapest because we have to make a profit being an independent company to pour in to the vital R&D resources that we believe are necessary to do the job. So we have spent a lot of time building up a product to meet the needs of the market. Our latest control panel which really is coming in to its own is the right product at the right time. It is in fact called the Euro โฆ because it was based around what we saw to be the emerging European Standards and, therefore, very well placed to conform to DD6662 whereas other companies have either had to redesign a control panel range to suit or had an awful lot of work to do meet the appropriate requirements. We have always been aware that we would need to produce something that the market required and the concept of the product really was looking at the European market and saying what is it that other countries do differently to the UK that are vital for the product to sell there and how could those functions and features be of use to our UK customers. So we have a very good product right at the point of market where it needs to be and as always Castle Care-Tech augments its income by attacking niche markets where we believe that price is not quite so important. My involvement with Euralarm has also helped me appreciate what happens in other markets and the needs of other markets.โ I have had the privilege of working with Tony on Euralarm for some years. Tony first came on board Euralarm representing the British security industry in Europe via the BSIA. "I took the job on because although I did not have a lot of time one of my work ethics is that you have to put things back in to life, whether it is your private or business life so that life can get better. I did believe that interaction within Europe was vital with the ensuing dominance of the EU in every walk of life. I felt that it was important that the security industry had a cohesive European face to make decisions that would benefit all of industry, particularly running a SME and ensuring that smaller organisations didnโt get trampled over by the bigger companies.โ I asked Tony about the current proposition concerning guards and alarm receiving centres (ARCs) and control rooms taking control of client contracts from installers? "Again this is a threat to our businesses. There are views out there that are being promulgated and saying to government, โthe private security industry can look after a lot of your security needsโ, but it needs to be structured and it needs to be secured. One of the perceived problems that the big guarding and ARC companies allege is that there is quite a large installer base that holds a sizeable number of monitoring contracts. They believe that at the push of a button an installer can move the account from one ARC to another when they see the rates changing favourably and obviously that is a potential problem for their business. One of the ways that they are looking at counteracting this scenario is by saying, โwell, in a legislative environment shouldnโt the contract be held by the monitoring company โฆ after all they are the ones that are sending out the guardsโ. While for the guards and ARCs and control rooms that is an opportunity, for the smaller installation companies it is a threat.โ Tony and I discussed this issue further and agreed that this is where the value of having a voice in Europe really counts. Tony said: โThis issue I believe has been primarily played out in a European theatre and thatโs where we as the smaller businesses need to have a voice and not just a small lobbying voice but a significant voice that can be projected in to the European Parliament so that people can see that there are viable and sensible alternatives to this. We have to open dialogue between the two opposing views and have to come to some sensible conclusion.โ I said I had been unaware of this issue until very recently. Tony explained: โThese things are flagged up. I flagged these issues up to the manufacturers and as a result I believe meetings between the heads of the various sections of the BSIA are being conducted where you have got for example the manufacturers and the installation section liaising. It is at this level that these issues have been identified and I have also alerted a few influential installers but I think that one of the problems is that everybody is so busy running their own business that they tend to think, โoh well, someone else will deal with thisโ. However, as we all know with EU legislation it suddenly hits you like a wave and at that point you have no chance to change it. The key thing is to be in there at the formative stages putting your point of view across and creating a sensible marketing strategy that will work. All we want is one of the fundamental requirements of the EU charter and that is freedom of choice within the market โฆ people should be free to choose their provider of security monitoring and response and that can be an either an installation company or an ARC. One of the major threats is of course the fact that if this new legislation goes through and the scene of the industry changes so dramatically that the contracts are only held by the ARCโs, then all the independent NSI and SAAIB installation companies that are building up their businesses to generate a revenue for their family in the future or perhaps to sell off will be left with businesses that are not worth much money. That is how vital some of these issues are that need addressing at the European level and this is where a vehicle like Euralarm comes in to its own. Euralarm is the voice of all of the national associations for security throughout Europe. It also has a very strong manufacturersโ forum so it represents manufacturers, installers and ARCs, throughout Europe, and one of the encouraging things about Euralarm is that about three years ago the manufacturers had had enough of this problem of โOne Stop Testingโ and certification where all products have to be multiply tested and multiply certified throughout Europe. We decided that that this was grossly expensive and needed to be resolved. Various organisations had tackled it including Euralarm without effect and the manufacturers agreed to put money in to Euralarm to fund the position of the CEO with the sole purpose of driving our views on the issue within Europe. We are right now on the threshold of this coming to fruition. During my presidency of Euralarm which was the last three years or so we managed to take this concept and push it out to the test and certification bodies to develop a EQM (European Quality Mark) scheme that we believe was acceptable to all parties and that essentially has been agreed and it is now a matter of driving it home and making this issue a reality. Now if you take that concept and apply it to the Installers we have a great European forum to replicate this level of success. Euralarm has established an APLG (All Party Liaison Group) of MEPs (Members of European Parliament) where we can feed subject matter in not only from ourselves but from other sectors of industry as well to make sure that the people who make decisions on these matters are well briefed and understand again the opportunities and the threats that can give us a clear path forward. That is why an association like Euralarm is the right vehicle for this type of work. I think it is vital that the UK security industry has a voice in Europe and Euralarm is that voice because if you donโt when the legislation gets to this countryโs shores it will be too late to change it.โ
