First Response Facilities Management

“Formed in 2018, First Response is a provider of manned security services and CCTV solutions.

Our work in highways started with Costain back in April 2022; we do gatehouse security for their compound. All our workers are now on the Passport system with the HCI - so we were awarded Passport Silver.

Officially, security workers don’t need the HCI, but Costain has made it a part of their requirement to work with them. So, we went and got the whole team inducted, and they’re all SCM and CSCS certified as well.

This way, our team is ready to work on any contract in highways. Right now, we do compound security, but as this contract progresses, we might be doing future projects in roadworks as well. We’ve even designed highways camera systems for rapid deployment – these pick up broken down and stranded vehicles, incursions, falling debris – that sort of thing.

So, now, we’ve got it done. We’ve learnt the system and we’re ahead of the curve, which is where we like to be. We’re working well with Costain, adapting and evolving with them.

We’ve even been showing them different parts of the system they could use, bouncing ideas off each other – when they’ve had issues, I’ve been able to show them how I do it!

I do think it is a really good tool.

It lets you know who is on the project at any one time, that they have the right credentials to be on site and to do what they’re tasked to do. It manages competencies so you know when staff qualifications are coming to an end when medicals are due to expire - it’s all flagged up on the system. You can use it to check other credentials as well – you can do a spot check to see if cards are in date. It’s also helping us go paperless!

It’s a really simple system to use, as we progress, we’ll get used to more and more functions. For example, recently, they’ve deployed Job Roles, so I’ve requested a Security Job Role be added and provided some suggestions of what that might look like on the system.”