Security firm boost technical team

The team at Alarm Watch in Whanganui continues to expand with the technical support team number rising to four with a new technician on board.

Alarm techniciain Marlen Stynder had been working with Securely (formerly Wanganui Security) but when that company moved its monitoring station to Levin, Alarm Watch offered the South African a position.

Graeme McKenzie, Alarm Watch technical team manager, said Mr Stynder's arrival boosted the company overall staffing level close to 60.

"And having Marlen here means our team is the largest we've had in 15 years," Mr McKenzie said/

"We've been really busy the last few years with the size of our projects growing. And we're noticing high end CCTV and access control swipe systems being widely taken up across the city."

Last year the company took on 12 more staff when it won the contract to provide 24-hour monitoring for a nationwide medical alarm provider.

Wade Coneybeer, Alarm Watch general manager, said the company was already monitoring for other alarm providers and this deal brought the number of people monitored from its Guyton St office to more than 23,000.

"We've been working toward this contract for the last four years and it's finally gone live," Mr Coneybeer said.

It had been a good year for the company. It introduced a smartphone app, developed in Wanganui, which lets customers respond to alarm events without monitoring staff having to call them. And soon after, Alarm Watch was selected by telecom giant Spark to monitor its new security product.