Securing warehouses, your goods, or your clients goods that are stored inside them requires thought, planning, equipment, monitoring and maintenance. Adequate security means addressing every risk factor applicable to an area, such as theft prevention, access security and control, surveillance, alarm response, fire and flood protection, disaster recovery, and many more, depending on the specific nature of the goods to be secured.
To put it simply, warehouse security is more than just preventing theft, it’s also about ensuring that the integrity of the goods inside are intact until it’s time for their eventual export or distribution. In many cases, this can mean hiring fire protection services, cctv installers, and even weather monitoring systems. Sometimes overlooked compared to corporate offices or other parts of a business, the warehouse is crucial and needs protecting.
Is it time to give your warehouse security and fire protection a little bit more attention?
Time to ensure that your products are safe and sound?
Here are four tips to improve your warehouse security measures.
- Create an emergency plan and implement it
Like every workplace, warehouses need to come up with their own emergency plan to execute in times of calamity or some unforeseen circumstances to prevent injuries or the loss of life. This plan should include specifying emergency exits, locations of fire extinguishers, ensuring that emergency alarm systems are working, and practising evacuation procedures regularly. Warehouse managers also need to come up with a way to assess site hazards to identify the different kinds of personal protective equipment that are appropriate for their specific use cases.
To make sure that your employees understand the emergency procedures, it is recommended to conduct emergency drills that simulate several different scenarios regularly. It may even be fruitful to conduct unannounced drills to calibrate the speed and efficiency of your employees’ alarm responses.
- Encourage your personnel to always communicate
The key to any successful security operation is to communicate anything and everything relevant to the task at hand. This includes creating rigorous inspection logs of security equipment, integrity of stored goods, as well as keeping tabs on surveillance video at regular intervals, regardless of the level of activity.
- Look into using motion detection technology
Motion detection is particularly useful for securing large areas with limited personnel on-site. While applications can vary, motion detectors are basically alarm systems that go off when a sensor is tripped by movement in areas where there shouldn’t be any. A competent facilities management security firm will have a 24/7 central monitoring centre that will immediately respond to such alarms.
- Beef up your perimeter protection
Perimeter protection involves securing the immediate area surrounding the warehouse with a combination of cctv systems, video verification systems, door protection, keyholding response and personnel who are trained to respond to anything out of the ordinary. While some warehouses exist and remain secure with guards and patrols manning their entry and exit points, it’s always best to supplement personnel with a host of other monitoring devices that can activate alarm systems and record footage for evidence.
Organising and implementing a high quality and robust fire and security system is definitely not a walk in the park, but a little planning and preparation can go a long way. For your peace of mind, you should entrust the security of your warehouse to reputable security firms who have the necessary technical skill and commitment to protecting your investment from as many risk factors as possible.
Amthal Fire and Security offers the best facilities management security services in Hertfordshire, London, and the rest of the UK. We offer everything from fire and security system design to installation, maintenance, monitoring, and alarm responses. Contact us today to know more!