As an Estate Manager, it is imperative to employ the highest caliber Security Manager. This employee will need to have security experience and be well versed in operations. Once employed, many a time Estate Managers take it for granted that the Security Manager is ensuring that all aspects of security are managed well and running smoothly.
At what point would an Estate Manager know if the security is not well managed?  How do you measure that operations are running well?
From my experience, I will provide some tips and merits to be used to ensure that operations are taken care of and contingencies are in place. I have found, when conducting audits that there are many areas of operational efficiencies that are overlooked, and this normally is only discovered after an event which could expose the Estate to reputational risk.
#TIP 1
SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
An efficient Security Manager would ensure that a concise Service Level Agreement is in place with all Service Providers. For Example, the Guarding Company, Technology Companies, Electric Fence Companies. These Service Level Agreements ensure a full understanding of the expectations, with turn around times for critical and high priority issues. The SLA must include a penalty schedule, linked to a critical failure clause. This ensures full accountability from the service provider. If this is all in place, request a copy of the last six months of penalties issued from your Security Manager. I have found that a concise SLA rarely exists on Estates, and this affects the operations by increasing down time and loss of accountability, which increases poor work performance in many cases. When I have found an SLA in place, it has been noted that the Security Manager’s do not use the recourse tools by issuing penalties when required, and this is an important merit when it comes to service delivery best practice.
Has your Security Manager negotiated preferential rates for your Estate?
Are there accepted turnaround times specific to the high priority of the issue, and how it affects the safety of the Estate?
Has your Security Manager included gross margin percentages on equipment and labour, with a transparent relationship with the Service Provider enabling them to call on costing sheets at any given time?
This document ensures a good working relationship, as it should contain documented expectations and recourse if these agreed expectations are not met, and/or continually not met. The SLA ensures that the agreement of services is black and white, and it reduces the argument each time a service related item needs to be raised. It is normally a good idea to set the expectations and agree and sign prior to appointing the Service Provider (if during a tender adjunction process)
We conduct audits to assist Estate and Security Managers to identify areas of improvement to ensure best practice and to improve service delivery and operations on Estates. We further conduct training to assist either Estate Managers to ensure that they are able to understand the security operations to the extent that they are confident in their Security Managers ability, and we offer training to Security Managers to assist in enhancing and improving the management of operations on site.
For further details contact Michelle, CEO of IDME Consulting
e-mail: michelle@idmeconsulting.co.za
cell: 084 405 5201