RemGuard Visual Management's RemVu Aquila transmission equipment, supplied through its franchise operation RemGuard Australia - part of AD Group, is playing a key role tackling out-of-hours crime at Stillwell Trucks based in Milperra, New South Wales.
Stillwell is a Sterling, Freightliner, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi Fuso Truck Dealership, specializing in new and used commercial vehicle sales, service and parts. Prior to the RemGuard solution, Stillwell was experiencing repeated major theft and damage to new trucks, mostly after hours and involving vehicles parked within an enclosed yard.
"Our problem was that thieves and vandals were continually getting into our yard [Stillwell is in a quiet location backing onto a golf course] to steal tyres and other expensive equipment at night," said Stillwell's administration manager Dick Boyce.
"Since they didn't actually break into our building, they didn't set off our alarms - and in any event they would probably be long gone before police or patrols could attend. We badly needed some sort of pro-active security that could actively detect and deter intruders within our fenced compound after hours."
Mobile patrols were proving to be expensive and ineffective in this environment, so RemGuard Australia was called in to design a remotely monitored, detector activated, CCTV system specific to Stillwell's needs. Because of the very high value of stored trucks, and the secluded location, an integrated event-driven system was agreed upon.
The security package ultimately designed and installed by RemGuard Australia for Stillwell Trucks consisted of strategically located cameras viewing the fenced yard and key access points, linked via an ADSL virtual private network (VPN) and RemVu Aquila transmission equipment to RemGuard's Remote Video Response Centre (RVRC) in Sydney. ‘Event activated' video monitoring and response after-hours is undertaken by specially trained RVRC operators, who are quickly alerted whenever movement is detected in the viewed area. Book-marked evidentiary logging of video events 24x7 is also supported. In addition to remotely monitored CCTV electric fencing was installed to protect and deter in critical areas and integrated access control was provided for authorized personnel.
"Immediately after we installed RemGuard around our after hours yard, theft and truck damage problems stopped - we have not had a single major incident since," said Mr. Boyce. "We would certainly recommend event activated remote video monitoring to others based on our experience - it's probably paid for itself many times over for us."
Kevin Crosby, Marketing Manager for RemGuard in the UK, said: "Stillwell's willingness to adopt leading edge preventative security technologies is an example to sites anywhere in the world that might currently be relying only on alarms, random mobile patrols, or recorded CCTV to protect their high-risk business enterprises that it is time to think again."
