Schools, particularly public schools, are under immense pressure today to have the highest level of security, but often times provided with very limited budgets. This is a stressful position to be in if you're in charge of the safety of a school or an entire district and have hundreds or even thousands of children to protect including all of its staff and administration personnel as well.
So how does a school safety and security director manage to keep everyone secure?
One way is for the school to attempt to design a system themselves (which I advise against). This would mean researching products on the internet and trying to determine which products and system are right for the school. Then they would put together a bid package with some basic part numbers and put the system out to bid Allied Security. This process is a recipe for disaster (I have seen this time and time again with many costly mistakes). Not only does the school waste potentially tens of thousands of dollars from their budget, but the end result is a poorly designed system that causes problems and costs more money for years to come.
A slightly better choice would be to hire a consulting or engineering firm to help with the design and research of selecting the appropriate security products and security company that can properly install a system. If you are planning on putting a system out to public bid, this is going to be the best choice. Hiring a professional to write a bid specification that accurately defines the scope of work can potentially save you thousands of dollars and it ultimately results in a faster, more complete implementation. However, there are two problems with this choice. First, hiring a consultant or engineer can be very costly, especially for a school or district already under budget constraints. Second, even the best bid specification cannot take everything into account, particularly the qualifications and ability of a security system integrator. Consider how fast a security company will be able to respond to a service call. This can be requested in a bid spec, but how do you really know the company will actually be able to come through when needed? For example, say you request a four-hour response time on all service calls. How do you know they will respond within four hours and what would happen if they didn't respond in that time frame or even at all? These qualifications are hard to guarantee when bidding a project through a public bid specification.
The best possible choice is to find a few security companies that can be referred through other schools. A good referral is a great first step to ensuring you have selected a reputable company that will support you and your security system. Second, ask the handful of companies that have been referred from other schools if they have a state or GSA contract. You should be able to find two to four companies that meet these requirements. Have the companies put together a solution and provide a proposal for the security system. It is important to make sure these are solutions that have been successfully used and tested in other school environments (you don't want to be the guinea pig in someone else's experiment). Have each company make a presentation, including a demonstration of the system. If possible, (especially in camera projects) ask for an on-site test. This helps provide accurate knowledge of how the security system will perform in your specific school environment. After going through these steps you should have an accurate conclusion as to the security company and security system that will best meet the needs of the school and at the best price.