Our Story
As this is typed up, it's interesting to look back at the various chapters of the business. What started as a little company to subcontract a couple of times a year has grown in to one of South Wales' most trusted local secuirty companies when it comes to our services.
For the last 3 years, we've held SIA Approved Contractor status. This year we've scored a couple of best practice points on our assessment too.
In addition to our established guarding business and mobile response business, we've recently added hardware to the offering too - some things we knew were excellent (Paxton), and some things that we been shown along the way that have a unanimous thumbs up from the whole team (Serage cameras & Ajax alarms). As of now, we're approved installers for all of these brands, with both of our senior operations team going back in to the classroom to rub off the rust and go back to our roots as engineers. As is a common theme; the first changes to the business started with our business management software - ensuring it was up to the task and developing a module for hardware systems and mainenance management to be managed. As with everything we do, we made sure that we were up to the task and had a bulletproof offering before we came to market.
So, it's 2023 and you're reading our biography on this page. What's the summary that we want you to take away? It's a simple message really: K9 Protection are one of the very few security businesses who are genuinely able to offer a complete solution. We're one of the only security companies that pledge to pay higher than Real Living Wage. We put the needs of our guards and the needs of our clients first.. which means we're never going to retire rich!
Who knows what's next, but if the last 12 years are anything to go by, it's going to be interesting.
Over the years, K9 Protection has grown our service portfolio and evolved. It transpired that we couldn't grow the year-round business in the local region at the same time as operating a seasonal events business; the decesion was made to phase out the event side of the business and give the local trade our full attention. At this point, the company had moved in to our first office in a shared building, and we'd slowly changed the type of guarding we provided. Anyone can provide a sleeper on a building site, and the fact of the matter is, many people were - guards would come to us for a job and be surprised when you tell them that lone-worker checks and patrol management aren't just lip-service and they're things that actually happen. We'd recruit guards who'd worked with competitors who'd turn up to their first shift with a quilt in the car, or an X-box complete with 32" TV screen. It was clear that this was the "normal" within the industry. It was clear that this was the resigned expectation of our clients.
Always wanting to be different, and not wanting to be yet another crap supplier who was content to circle the drain as they race to the bottom, K9 Protection went the opposite way. We started writing detailed policies and procedures with view to becoming an ACS approved contractor. We signed up with the Living Wage Foundation. We started carrying out proper vetting and checks of our staff in house. We started carrying out proper vetting of clients too - the number of clients in the very early days that found it acceptable to provide no welfare, assumed the guard would be sleeping so it wouldn't matter, and simply didn't care, so we streamlined our offering, our team, and our clientbase. When we went to Living Wage accreditation, one (ex)client's response in 2017 to us telling them we'd be looking to pay £7.85 per hour was "I've got skilled fitters in there that I don't pay that much, I don't think security are worth it".
During this time, we had started receiving calls for key-holding services. After an initial reluctance, it was decided to get in to the position where we can offer a key holding and alarm response solution to clients; Paul set to work on designing the module for the software. Dave set to work on buying in key-safes, and the service was launched. In November 2015, we took on our first alarm response client.
After working the doors, and working events for many years, it became very clear that there were areas within the event industry that were lacking. Perimeter security, and comms being the biggest weaknesses that we could see.. what if.. I mean.. just imagine a company came along who could bolster these areas, providing dedicated subcontract staff that only deal with these niche areas; and this is what happened.
In 2011, K9 Protection Ltd was formed. The sole purpose of the business at this point was the provision of dog handlers and radio comms teams to the events industry; boutique festivals, raves, agriculture events, and other similar delights. People ask where the name "K9 Protection" camer from, and this is it. We purchased a knackared old caravan from somewhere in Preston that someone had converted in to an event control room, and went about setting out our stall. The idea being that K9 Protection would remain a largely seasonal affair, with people's day jobs still taking presedence.
It's surprising what a website does.. even though we didn't advertise security services per-se, we started getting local enquiries from businesses looking for various guarding services. From talking to these prospective clients, it very quickly became clear that the state of the secuirty industry in the South Wales area wasn't great. The static guarding industry was made up of a few big national secuirty companies, and plenty of chaps running their business from the parcel shelf of their cars, paying cash, and not asking much from the guards in the shape of providing a service. With this in mind, we set about investigating the feasibility of becoming a man-guarding company.
With a background in databases and IT, of course, the first thing (or oe of the first things) any good company needs is a data management system; and as over-states as it sounds, the single most important step towards the guarding industry that we made was the inception of our GMS.. our guard management system. From the early days, the GMS was designed in such a way that it'd grow with the company, whether we're running 1 or 1000 guards, the software will do the job. For the first couple of months or so, Paul set about designing the software and integrating most key features of the business.. lone worker safety, rotas and incident management were the first modules that were developed, allowing us very quickly to become a largely paperless operation.
Our first guards were friends.. We didn't really have a hierarchy, just a couple of lads that got the work, and a whole team that did the work who came from personal contacts and friends we'd worked with over the years. The business started off being ran from the back room of a terraced house in Newport - somewhere that it very soon became apparent that we had already outgrown.
Imagine the scene.. You're trained as an IT engineer (networks & databases), and you have enough presence about you that allows you to make a decent side hustle working in the security industry for extra cash at weekends. This is how it happened - who knew back then that this would be the formation of the brain child that became a security business in it's own right.
Security manpower was something that was always a dabble-job; not just to our directors, but to our entire management team.. we all had jobs in different industries, but all had relevant transferrable skills. Dave as a fire alarm engineer, Paul with his network & IT skills, and Ellinor with her experience in the logistics industry. During this time, Paul had moved from the IT trade in to the secuirty industry full time, working at first as a dog handler, and latterly as a regional manager for a national business.
