A three-year manned guarding services contract for Burton-on-Trent’s Octagon Shopping Centre has gone to Axis Security.
This marks Axis Security’s first contract win with DTZ, a property services company, which used the procurement agency, Buying Force, in the Octagon’s tender process. DTZ manages over 6,000 properties in the UK and has a presence in 208 cities across 52 countries. The shopping mall is home to 48 retailers and eateries, including a recently re-furbished TK Maxx. When the contract came up for tender, Peter Hardingham, Centre Manager sought to find a security company that would provide a responsive and pro-active management system. He says: “The approach to management is important because we need our chosen security provider to constantly be on the look out for ways to improve its service and for repeat issues that can be addressed pro-actively.”
Axis Security provides the Staffordshire centre with 216 hours of manned guarding a week, 40 of which are dedicated supervisor hours. Axis TUPE’d all five of the centre’s security staff and adds that mobilisation went smoothly by clearly communicating all of Axis’s working practices, ensuring all first-aid training was up to date and that all officers were dual-SIA-licensed – for CCTV and manned guarding.
“The mobilisation went very well,” says Peter, “and since then we have seen an improvement in the way the officers are managed, issues are dealt with more pro-actively, leaving us with less problems to resolve.”
On why Axis Security was chosen in preference to the other five companies going for the contract, Peter says that price was not the primary concern: “It was about Axis Security’s managerial structure and operational capabilities; in Axis Security’s proposals they demonstrated how KPIs were used to effectively and systematically identify and communicate areas of improvement. This approach has had a positive impact on the shopping centre’s security provision.”
And Jonathan Levine, Axis Group CEO says: “Building solid, communicative relationships both with our clients and security officers is the key to our success. We make sure we only promise what we know we can deliver and so become a provider that our clients and security officers can trust.”
