Tate St Ives is Cornwall’s most popular gallery, welcoming 200,000 visitors each year and playing a vital role in the cultural life of the local community. Opened in 1993 and expanded in 2017, Tate St Ives presents modern and contemporary art from the Tate collection alongside temporary exhibitions, new commissions, learning, and research programmes. Tate St Ives also manages the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, situated just 5 minutes around the corner from the gallery.
To help protect its treasures, Kestrel Guards, a family-owned security provider operating across the South of England, was appointed. The company’s services include Guarding, Mobile Patrols, Key Holding, Alarm Response, Unlock & Lock services, and Electronic Security Systems. With successful expansion over the years, it is now one of the largest security companies in the area, with a gross turnover today of over £13 million and offices in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire.
For the Tate St Ives, Kestrel chose SmartTask Mobile Patrols and Alarm Response apps. Kestrel has worked with SmartTask since 2016, adopting SmartTask workforce management software to support its full range of services. It has deployed features, including Employee Scheduling, Check Calls, Alerts, Static Patrol Monitoring, and Reporting; and most recently adding SmartTask’s Mobile Operations and Alarm Response solutions.
Since implementing SmartTask’s Mobile Patrols app, Kestrel has benefitted from significant operational efficiencies as well as increased real-time visibility of its services, both factors helping it to win new business.
“As part of our tender submission and presentation, we demonstrated how the use of SmartTask by our Control Room and local Management Team would enhance and ensure effective and efficient service delivery to the Tate,” says Russell Doyle, Head of National Operations at Kestrel Guards.
“The welfare and happiness of the security team is paramount. We demonstrated the kind of reporting visibility customers would have and the safety net that we would provide the security team with, who would be transferred to us under TUPE. We could provide assurance to the Tate Directors of staff well-being around the clock with our Southampton control team. They can view in real-time the security officers conducting a patrol around the Tate in St Ives, over 350 miles away.”
One of the main benefits of using the SmartTask app is the instant information that the central operations team in Southampton has of the officers out on patrol. Previously, the team was reliant on reviewing and reporting on scanned point data collected from sites after the night (and day) patrols had been conducted.
This meant a more disjointed approach to the service – any issues, whether operational or attendance and performance, would only be picked up in retrospect for action. Now with site assignments and notes sent and received via the app in real-time, updated information is recorded in one place and is readily to hand for SLA reports and invoices.
As well as Static Guarding and Mobile Patrols, Kestrel is using the SmartTask Alarm Response app to manage alarm call-outs, a key part of the services that it offers. This has significantly reduced the time taken to handle alarm responses for both the control team and the individual officers.
Currently, Kestrel has 35 response officers using the SmartTask Mobile Patrols app, attending over 700 alarm response calls per month. Prior to using the app, each call out would have required at least four phone calls (a call to the officer, booking on and off, and an update back to the control room on the site check). This total of an average of nearly 3000 calls per month is now completely replaced with the app, which also provides a full electronic record of all call-outs, with times and dates, used for audits and proof of service delivery.