Building Safety Into Your New Office

Burglary, robbery, vandalism and other crimes can be costly for businesses. Other than causing financial losses, they can also result in serious injuries or even death.

A significant percentage of businesses have been victims of crime, and many of them have been chosen as targets because of their lack of crime-prevention features.

If you are planning to build a new office, you should make sure that it has adequate security features.

Here are a number of security features that can effectively protect your office and employees against crime:

Access Control

Making your office less accessible to unauthorized people can minimize the risk of criminal intrusion.

This can be done by installing doors, windows and locks that are made of high quality materials. Solid wood and metal doors with cylinder locks are highly resistant to kicking, beating and drilling.

Depending on circumstances, it may be a good idea to implement a key card or biometric access control system as well. All the windows in your office should have locks, bolts or swing latches, and break-proof glass. For optimal window security, you can install grilles, bars or heavy-duty wire screening.

If your office is a freestanding building with an outdoor space, you can keep criminals at bay by installing tall electric and barbed-wire fences along its perimeter.

Gates should also be made of a tough material, such as wrought iron, and they should be secured with strong padlocks and chains when they are not in use.

Surveillance

Setting up video surveillance cameras in and around your office is an effective way to detect or identify criminals before or after they commit their crimes.

These cameras provide a record of events that happen within your office premises 24 hours a day, and their presence alone can deter criminal activities.

Other than video surveillance cameras, you can also use a wide range of devices to detect criminals, such as motion detectors, audio detectors, photoelectric detectors and electromechanical detectors. These devices will automatically set off an alarm if they detect unusual activities in your office premises.

It is also important that you take measures to improve natural surveillance capability throughout your office.

You should have the landscape around your office designed in such a way that criminals will be clearly visible when they are within your premises. Avoid having tall foliage and structures in your outdoor space, so that criminals will have no place to hide.

Also, make sure that workstations in your office are strategically arranged to give you and your employees clear views of the parking lot and other outdoor areas.

Target Hardening

The best way to safeguard your office from criminal activities is to prevent criminals from even attempting to enter your premises.

You can make your office a less attractive target to criminals by increasing outdoor lighting and placing a sign outside saying that your premises are protected.

Building a crime-proof office may require substantial investment, but the protection and peace of mind it provides make it all worthwhile.