Monitoring Centre Supervisor - Carol and Mike's Stories
Carol Crossley
Carol works for ART Security. There she manages the staff of the monitoring centre, speaks with clients, including the bureaus, and is responsible for data entry and memos. If clients have a problem, she has to liaise with other managers and clients to get things fixed.
She learns something new every day, especially with new equipment and new programs. She gets a buzz when they get a result from monitoring a break-in.
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The main thing she finds challenging is dealing with difficult clients who get upset if their alarms are not actioned correctly or if the alarms are faulty.
Carol completed the Certificate III in Security, but most of her training has been through work experience. She has also done small business and other short courses. This company encourages staff to do courses that are relevant to their work, such as occupational health and safety or management training. This company is hands on, holds regular staff meetings and the work environment is very friendly.
Carol has worked in the industry since she left school at 17 years of age. She started part time, and after years of experience in different control rooms, worked her way through to the role of manager in 1997.
She’s on call 24 hours and has to make sure that whatever she’s doing outside of work allows her to get into the control room if required. Her main interests are her children and admits that the 24 hour on call demand is very hard on them.
Carol believes the future of this industry is wide open. The use of CCTV cameras and the monitoring industry will expand as people want to feel secure knowing that their premises are being cared for when they are not there.
Careers prospects in electronic security are great on the technical side. Carol says the monitoring side is not for everyone – it takes a special person to work with the required intensity in the confined space of the control room. However, she rates the administration area as easy to get into and a good way to get to know the industry.
Mike Mansfield
Mike Mansfield is the Operations Manager for Alarm and Video Monitoring Centre, an A1 Grade monitoring centre, located in East Perth. They specialise in monitoring alarms for both domestic and corporate clients. Even though this side of the business is relatively new, in less than two years they have won several corporate clients including all Bunnings stores nationwide, Coventry in Australia and New Zealand and Centrelink in Western Australia.
Before joining the electronic security industry, Mike worked for the Australian Defence Forces in a supplies position. But he now has over 30 years experience in security, 20 of which have been spent in Western Australia. He enjoys working in this field, especially as each working day is different.
Mike has been involved in setting up several monitoring centres. What he must look for when initially choosing a centre is its location, the available communications facilities in the building, such as telephone and internet services, the construction of the building, which includes good internal and external structures that can be easily converted into a bunker-style set up. To be approved as an A1 Grade monitoring centre, the building must also have fireproof doors with strict controls and door access, a duress button for staff which can be activated in case of a break-in or invasion and other ancillary services such as a back up for communication lines. Mike has never experienced a break in, but he has faced a situation where the phone lines were tampered with, and he had to rely on back-up phone services.
An A1 grade monitoring centre must also have a minimum of two people on shift 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So Mike manages a team of eight full-time and two part-time staff. The Alarm and Video Monitoring Centre is also monitored by another centre.
Mike is the sole Operations Manager, which means his role is very broad. He writes the standard operating procedures for monitoring and responding to alarms, resolves problems that may arise internally or with clients, maintains staff training records and conducts yearly assessments. He is also on call 24 hours a day for his staff, helps source new clients and responds to tenders.
When employing new staff, Mike always looks for an ability to apply common sense to a situation, someone who is intelligent and articulate, good keyboard and computer skills, an ability to communicate calmly and professionally and the willingness to work in a heavily secured environment with no natural light. Mike believes that any person with these attributes can be easily trained to become a good monitoring centre operator. All the operators are required to provide 100 points of ID and to pass a Police Clearance check.
Mike likes to use mentors with new staff - new operators sit with an experienced person for up to six weeks for on-the-job training. Even though Mike considers it a great career for women, he has no female operators and he rarely gets employment applications from women.
Note: For the purpose of consistency in industry terminology, references to control room in Mike’s story have been changed to monitoring centre.
Related Links
Carol Crossley
(1:52 mins - 21.4MB)
Mike Mansfield
(2:18 mins - 10.3MB)