Industries
The risk is different in a shop, on a construction site and at a school, and so is the brief. These are the settings we work in most often, and what actually tends to go wrong in each.
Where we work
However different the sector, the assignment starts the same way: a site visit, then a written brief that officers are held to.
Reception-facing officers who control access without making the building feel like a checkpoint.
Office buildings carry a constant flow of staff, visitors, contractors and couriers through a single entrance. The security job and the front-of-house job are the same job, and the officer who cannot do both halves is the wrong officer for the post.
Deterrence at the door and on the floor, with challenge procedures applied to a written policy.
Retail loss is continuous rather than dramatic, and the response has to be consistent to be lawful as well as effective. Officers work to an agreed challenge and refusal policy so the same standard applies to every customer.
Gate control and load checks during the day, irregular patrols when the site stands empty.
Plant, cable and materials are the target, and a great deal of it leaves through the gate in daylight in a vehicle nobody stopped. Controlling what goes out matters as much as controlling who comes in.
Vehicle and personnel movement records, stock checks, and cover across shift changeovers.
High-value stock, constant vehicle movement and multiple shift handovers make a distribution site hard to watch informally. Recorded movements turn a suspicion into evidence.
Yard control, driver check-in and load verification at the point vehicles enter and leave.
A transport yard's risk concentrates at the gate. Checking loads against paperwork at the moment of departure is the control that actually works, and it needs to be done every time rather than when someone looks suspicious.
Door supervisors and stewards deployed against a written plan agreed before the doors open.
Crowd flow is the safety issue at an event, not confrontation. Entry lanes, queue management and exit routes are decided on paper first, then staffed to that plan.
SIA-licensed door supervision that meets the conditions attached to your premises licence.
Licensed premises carry legal conditions on entry control, age checks and refusals. Getting them wrong is a licensing problem before it is a security one, so refusals and ejections are logged as a matter of course.
Officers holding the enhanced checks the setting requires, working to the school's safeguarding policy.
A school is a safeguarding environment first. Officers work to the site's own policy and hold enhanced disclosure where the role requires it — that is a condition of taking the work, not an optional upgrade.
Officers trained to de-escalate, in a setting where confrontation is the worst available outcome.
Healthcare sites combine open public access, distressed visitors, controlled drugs and lone workers. De-escalation is the primary skill; everything else is a fallback.
Concierge-style cover that combines access control with genuine service to residents.
Residents are not visitors, and treating them as such quickly becomes a complaint to the managing agent. The role is access control delivered as hospitality.
Attendance at empty premises to deter squatting, metal theft, fly-tipping and the arson risk that follows.
An empty building deteriorates fastest once someone establishes that nobody is checking it. Recorded, irregular attendance is what breaks that assumption.
Consistent, documented procedure for sites with open public access and accountability obligations.
Publicly accountable sites need security that can be explained afterwards. Written procedures and proper incident records are as much a part of the service as the officer on the door.
Describe the site and the hours rather than the service name. We will tell you what it actually needs, and say so if that is less than you expected.
