REFRESHINGLY MODERN
Site security is an urgent concern, particularly since the end of red diesel. The products offered by BauWatch UK offer a solution, while the company itself is much bigger than it first appears…
V
isitors to the recent Vertikal Days expo might not have noticed, but the site was
secured by a number of CCTV towers bearing the legend ‘Protected by BauWatch’. Quite by chance, I later bumped into Head of Strategic Accounts, Louise Smith. We got chatting and the idea for a profile article was born.
BauWatch UK is a modest outfit that is just finding its feet, although it is a subsidiary of a European parent company and is wholly owned by a much larger organisation that has multiple business interests and over 20,000 employees. With all of that in mind, BauWatch UK has the potential to hit the ground running. We’ll get to its aims and ambitions soon enough, but first I wanted a little context. UK MD Alexis Potter fills in the backstory – how did the UK business come about?
“Originally a business called ‘OnGarde’ would bring BauWatch products into the UK and market them as their own. BauWatch, which has roots in the Netherlands, acquired OnGarde towards the beginning of last year. Around the same time, they also acquired a business called ‘Sicuro’. OnGarde is no more, but we changed the name to BauWatch UK when the company was established last July. Sicuro ran separately, and our two businesses were merged earlier this year
Keeping Watch - Louise Smith, Head of Operations Chris Atkinson, Alexis Potter, Kim Webb and Nicola Newall.
“BauWatch was actually started by a Dutch company called ‘Visser Assen’, which is a bit like Jewson here in the UK. Some of their customers had requested a product to monitor their sites, and Visser Assen launched the first prototype towers in 2008. It looked like an ancient version of Robocop, but this was the foundation of the company. Finally, BauWatch was acquired by the Haniel investment company in Germany at the beginning of last year.”
Eyes in the sky - the BauWatch cameras.
BauWatch now has over 200 employees, with over 5,500 active CCTV towers installed throughout Europe. Its 24/7 monitoring service registered more than 20 million alarms, resulting in close to 34,000 evictions
and 1,043 arrests in 2021 alone. Generally speaking, a live warning from the loudspeaker built into BauWatch towers is enough to deter most trespassers, but local police or security services are also alerted if a threat is detected.
BauWatch is the leading player in its sector, so the fledgling UK division already has a substantial footing. Being part of the Haniel group must have its advantages – what are they, and what is this word they use ‘Enkelfähig’?
“Enkelfähig’ is a culture of doing business – the way it was explained to me was that you should be able to look back at your work,
22 Executive Hire News - July/August 2022
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