The rain held off thankfully, for the ARC Monitoring open day yesterday, writes Mark Rowe.
Naturally, alarm receiving centres are based indoors, but as part of the welcome, you could enjoy food and drink from a street food van, parked outside. Also parked beside the north Bristol base of the monitoring firm was a Hikvision demonstration van, pictured. Vendors there besides were GJD, the detector and illuminator product company; and CSL Dualcom, the alarm signalling product firm.
The visitors were a mixture, which showed the wide nature of inputs into an ARC, and how many parts of the security industry have an interest in remote monitoring. Visitors came from key-holding contractors, fire and security installers, even distributors.
Besides seeing something of the admin work and routine of an ARC, visitors were accompanied to the actual monitoring room, via an intercom and airlock arrangement. There visitors were talked through how the operators (a 50-50 male-female split) pick up and handle alarms. ARC Monitoring uses three makes of software: EMS, Immix and Sentinel. Also shown was ARC Monitoring’s portal for reporting to customers, that enables operators to access sites, and serves as a log for any queries and as an audit trail for a site’s event history.
While staff were not wearing face masks, visitors to the monitoring room were asked to mask up (using masks provided; for a reminder of how monitoring centres got through the pandemic, see the ARC Monitoring blog). MD Sian Doherty was featured in the June print edition of Professional Security Magazine. She also talked visitors through the company’s work. The open day is part of the ARC wanting customers to see what they are getting, ‘which we really encourage’, she said.
More in the January print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
About ARC Monitoring
Set up in 1999, based in Filton, Arc Monitoring is an NSI Gold Approved CCTV Monitoring and Alarm Receiving Centre, with residential and commercial (such as solar farm) customers. Visit www.arcmon.com.
