Millions of dollars worth of equipment is stolen from construction sites every single day. Not only does this mean that the businesses who have lost this equipment have to spend money to replace it (or claim on their insurance which isn’t always easy), but it also means that construction has to halt, which is also costly.
As well as this, there is a safety issue. If people are coming onto your site to steal equipment, they could get hurt while they are there, or they might hurt others. Either way, the site would be closed, and the damage could be serious. Plus, your team has to work safely too.
Therefore it is vital to make sure your construction site is safe and secure so that there is less chance of anyone breaking in and stealing assets and equipment. Here are some tips on how to do it.
Use Lighting
If you can install large flood lights around your construction site, criminals and mischief-makers will be deterred from entering. They won’t want to be spotted by passers-by, and they will certainly think twice about doing anything they know they shouldn’t.
You might even fool trespassers into thinking that there are still workers on the site, which makes it even less likely they will want to attempt to get inside and do any damage or steal any equipment.
Use Asset Tracking
Construction asset tracking is a great way to keep everything safe and secure on your construction site. When you use this tool, you can immediately see where your equipment is in real-time. If you spot that something is where it shouldn’t be, you can contact the site and launch an investigation sooner rather than later in order to find it and return it to where it is meant to be.
As well as this, if something is stolen, then you and the police will be able to track it much more efficiently and hopefully retrieve it as well as find the thief.
Use Field A Services Management System
A field services management system, with its various capabilities, can provide a construction company with a number of immediate and long-term advantages, such as enhanced customer experience, faster response times, and time and resource savings. It also improves security and safety.
When it comes to construction, field service management often entails sending employees or contractors to a place outside of the company’s facilities to install, maintain, or repair equipment, systems, or assets. Field service managers oversee an organization’s field resources and organize the work of the construction crew. With a sound FSM system in place, this becomes much easier, and managers can ensure that the right people are doing the right thing in the right way much more quickly and accurately.
Install Cameras and Alarms
Even if criminals are still determined to enter your site despite the tracking equipment and the lighting, if you have cameras and alarms all around, they will have even more barriers to contend with. Use CCTV on your site 24 hours a day, even when there are workers there, and ensure there are signs up to alert anyone who might want to break in that someone is watching and their movements are being recorded.
There are two options regarding alarms that you can choose:
- You can have a loud alarm that will shock the trespasser and hopefully make them leave your site before they can take anything or do any damage. This kind of alarm will also alert anyone nearby who can call the police.
- You can have a silent alarm. This kind of alarm will alert the police automatically, keeping the criminal on site until they arrive and they can be arrested.
Hire A Security Guard
Having a security guard – or perhaps more than one if your site is large – patrolling the site when there is no one working there (and even being there when workers are on-site to keep things safe) can be a huge deterrent to would-be thieves.
Combined with the cameras on site, a security guard should be able to spot anything untoward and apprehend the thief before they get away with your tools and equipment.
Use Shipping Containers For Storage
When robberies happen on construction sites, materials and tools are usually taken. So, when all the workers leave the site, you should make sure your valuable items are locked up and out of sight.
Putting things in shipping containers is a great way to keep them safe. Since they were made to ship goods overseas, they are very strong and durable because they’ve had to stand up to terrible conditions.
A shipping container is a great way to keep your possessions secure from criminals. Attempting to break into a shipping container would be near-impossible, and thieves wouldn’t know for sure whether there was anything valuable within the container.
