Protecting Your Building With Key Holding Security
The most important asset of any commercial business is its people, above and beyond whatever buildings, equipment, product and materials may be stored in a commercial property. However, the more people you have in a business, the harder it becomes to manage security, and not just because there are more people to worry about keeping safe. The main issue is you can have too many people with security responsibilities.
In a small business with, say, four or five people working in it, the main key holder for the business property will normally be the employer. In this case it is easy to designate and control this, and on odd occasions when the employer is on holiday or absent for whatever reason, they will have a nominated senior person within the rest of the team who will have responsibilities to lock up and open up in a morning, and will be issued with a spare key for this purpose. The larger the business becomes, however, the harder it is to manage.
What is key holding security?
If you have a large team and maybe multiple buildings, departments or entrances, it can become difficult to assign responsibilities and distribute keys. It can get to the point where you don’t know who has keys and who hasn’t, and you may not even know how many keys are in existence in the system. So it becomes difficult to track and this leaves you exposed to keys falling into the wrong hands – not necessarily criminals, but people within an organisation not authorised to have access to certain offices and/or information etc – and you are also vulnerable to situations where an emergency occurs and either no one knows who has a key or the person with the key isn’t available.
This is where you need professional key holder services, to manage the storage and distribution of keys and to control the very important process of accessing your commercial building and responding to emergency issues.
So what are the main duties of key holding security?
- Storing keys
- Distributing keys and maintaining records of who has them
- Assigning responsibilities for locking and unlocking business premises
- Risk assessment of security procedures
- Being available 24/7 for emergency access requirements
- Being available to deal with false alarms and activations out of hours
- Working in association with other security services such as manned guards and security patrols
Using a professional key holder security service working in accordance with BS 7984-1 (Key holding and response services – General recommendations for key holding and response services) will ensure you have complete control over key distribution and have a nominated party available 24/7 to respond to any security issues. This gives the employer complete peace of mind, but also a sole point of contact for security issues, which streamlines the function and makes security procedures much more professional and straightforward.
Professional key holding services
It is really up to the discretion of the employer how far they take the role of key holding services, and this also depends on how large the premises in question are and how many people are on site. It is helpful to combine this function with other security responsibilities so you have one point of contact to simplify the security process. But a major advantage is that using a professional key holding service releases senior people within the organisation from security responsibilities and allows them to concentrate on their core function in the business. And of course the primary benefit is that your security is professionalised and improved to give you complete assurance that your business and its people are properly safeguarded.
Apardion have security resources stationed throughout the UK, with a strong representation across Scotland, so we can be responsive and reactive to your security needs at any time. If you have immediate, temporary or long term security needs, then we have the qualified and experienced people to help you. So if you need key holding services in Scotland or anywhere in the UK, contact Apardion today.
