Equipment Yard Security: 10 Tactics that Stop Equipment Yard Theft
From the thief’s perspective an equipment yard presents a larger potential haul than a construction site. Plus, if they get insider help, your yard can be safer and easier to hit. Equipment will be your biggest concern, along with materials if you use your equipment yard for staging. It’s likely that you’ll see quite a few of your equipment maintenance tools grow legs too.
Since your equipment yard is a permanent set up – as opposed to most construction sites – you can really get a crime fighting advantage by “layering” some of the security tactics listed below.
1) Adequate Fencing
Depending on your level of unacceptable intrusions consider some alterations to your fencing. You could install an extra tall fence, or even a secondary fence all around the perimeter. Barbed wire couldn’t hurt… you. A concrete base can stop thieves from “lifting up your skirt” and getting in fill their bags with “loot.”
2) Live Video Surveillance
Adding a permanent layer of live video surveillance can really crack down on equipment yard theft. Add live theft deterrents like sirens and strobe lights and you will see thieves running off your property – literally.
Watch this video of our remote surveillance crew running thieves off with a burst from the onsite siren. You can see the thief running for his life at 00:18…
3) Security Signage
Signage that explains how eagerly you prosecute, video tape, shoot at, or otherwise run off intruders makes for excellent crime deterrence. When necessary make your signs bilingual.
4) Access Point Protection
How often do you change your locks? We hope you change them when you let disgruntled employees go. Do you have any unnecessary points of access into your equipment yard? If so you should fence these over. How protected is your main gait? If there’s a long drive up to it consider installing crash proof gates so that reckless thieves don’t plow their way through with a stolen vehicle.
5) Asset Management Technology
Do your valuable vehicles get lost? If you’re still using a whiteboard to track and manage your fleet it might be time to investigate some asset management technology. Sloppy asset management makes it easy for employee thieves to flourish and makes it harder for you to recognize when thieves of any kind strike.
6) Extensive Employee Screening
On that note of employee theft, we highly recommend extensive and ongoing employee screening and drug testing. We know this is not always possible, but we see it time and again that it’s insiders who lead to the majority of theft. This only makes sense – they know what’s valuable and they know where it’s stored. All they need is a buyer…
7) Effective Security Lighting
Thieves and other intruders love shadows. Be an enemy to thieves and keep your equipment yard free from shadows with bright white light. Be sure to keep from creating a glare from any areas visible from the street so that passers by and neighbors can see clearly onto your property.
8) Out of Sight, Out of Mind
You have to discourage those “impulse thieves” who are just driving around looking for a quick score. When possible lock your most valuable equipment inside your garage. If you can’t put it inside your garage then park it defensively so that it’s not easy to load onto a trailer. Throw a tarp over everything with conceivable value and when this isn’t possible chain it up.
9) Motion Detection
In certain cases a motion detector can make a nice supplement to other security measures. Hook them up to lights or, better yet, hook them up to your cameras so that they start recording when they detect motion. If you have live surveillance along with remote activated sirens and strobes you can run thieves off without ever having to call the police.
10) Conduct Nighttime Security Evaluations
Test your existing equipment yard security by driving by at night and thinking like a thief. Is there a shadow large enough to park a truck and a trailer? Are there trees growing near the fence, or pallets stacked up inside that could make a nice ladder? Most of all check your lighting and make sure that it’s bright and clear enough to spot a face at 100 feet.
If you’d like to discuss equipment yard security with one of our security experts please contact us today >>
One Response to “Equipment Yard Security: 10 Tactics that Stop Equipment Yard Theft”
May 4th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
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