How To React After A Security Breach At Your Construction Site

A security breach of any business can be traumatic and stressful, but it can also carry a huge potential cost, particularly on a construction site. There could be damage to or theft of valuable equipment which carries a cost in terms of replacement, but also in its impact on ongoing building work and meeting deadlines set out in contracts. You could also experience the theft of tools, damage to completed building work and the costs of health and safety breaches if a member of the public has been injured on your site.

These could all add to insurance and public liability costs and could combine to make a construction project unjustifiable or at least cost-prohibitive. Security of a construction site is a huge challenge because by its very nature, the landscape of the site is changing all the time and presents new risks and obstacles every day. For this reason health and safety and security procedures need to be extremely robust, but at the same time sufficiently flexible so that they can be seamlessly adapted as the site develops. However, when you discover a security breach at your construction site it is important that you react in the correct way in order for the incident to be properly dealt with, and so you can make the necessary site arrangements to safeguard the site going forward.

• Report

You need to report the incident to the police straight away, but before this you need to quickly assess the situation and establish the facts of what has happened. Is the security breach ongoing? People may still be on site. Someone may have injured themselves on the construction site. Look for obvious signs of what has happened and what is missing or damaged and then call the police.

• Safe

While you wait for the police to arrive you should make the site safe and make yourself safe, but without touching or moving anything that could be dangerous or could be evidence of a crime.

• Document

Once the police arrive they will ask you about the security breach and will probably ask you to document exactly what is missing or damaged. Ask responsible personnel to help and be strategic in how the site is patrolled so that nothing important is missed. This needs to be done as quickly as possible. You also need to establish what time the site was last occupied, by whom, who was responsible for safeguarding the site and who had access to the site. There should be a responsible key-holder who can advise on any alarm activations or security breaches they are aware of.

• Secure

When you get the ‘okay’ from the police and insurance company you will be able to clean and secure the site, being careful not to touch or move anything which could be evidence, until you are allowed to do so. At this point you also need to review your security procedures and assess whether they are adequate and what additional measures you may need to put in place. You should consider extra security if you think it is justified, such as temporary CCTV systems, new key-holder access responsibilities, manned patrols of the site or maybe dog security for a short-term period. Essentially you are doing everything you can to prevent a reoccurrence, but also reviewing your entire site security to cover short term and longer-term risks.

Contact First Response Group for your construction site security

At First Response Group our construction site security services enable you to implement professional security controls on a fixed and permanent basis or on a temporary, short-term basis to cover more immediate risks. We have smart site security controls which allow for remote monitoring and can quickly deploy manned patrols to ensure your entire site is covered while security risks remain high. On a long-term basis we can work with you to carry out a full site risk assessment to establish what security controls you need to fully safeguard your construction site, so contact our team at First Response Group today.