CSM: Are you going to maintain the Intercon building in Toronto? Will there be any change in locations?

Van Schepen: Yes. We’re looking at all the real estate in the U.S. and Canada that has come in through this acquisition. We have a pretty small space in Calgary and they have a large space there so we may be able to relocate into their premises and reduce some space there. In Mississauga they don’t have the capability to take in even a fraction of what we have here.

Our central station is housed here and that’s not something you can uproot very easily. We’re on the subway line, which from the guard side is very advantageous for us. Broadly what they are looking at is if there are ways to reduce space without impacting the business they will do that.
 
CSM: There are groups of guards that fall under unions, why do you think Intercon has been able to avoid that?

Van Schepen: I think we treat our people very well. We’ve been very fair ”“ our benefit packages are very competitive. If an employee has issues we have open channels for them to voice those to without feeling they will inspire the wrath of anyone. The relationship we have with our staff is very healthy. There have been attempts with the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) as they were targeting First Service for a while and looking at Intercon and had done some fairly unscrupulous things at some of our sites. Our guards know it’s against their standing orders to even engage in a discussion with someone so they would say, Look I can’t talk to you. People would follow them home; we had people stealing logbooks from sites.  We don’t have a big anti-union posturing here at all ”“ the employees have never shown a real need or desire to go that way.

CSM: What would be your starting wage?

Van Schepen: It varies. In Calgary the starting wages are now north of $16 whereas here they are probably more $11 to $12 and Vancouver a little higher than that. We offer a lot of training courses and the employees can move themselves up to a higher grade and make more money. We encourage them to do that. The courses are free and they can move themselves up the pay band.

CSM: Do you think the legislation regulating the private security industry is going to improve anything in the industry?

Van Schepen: It’s hard to say. For a company like ours I don’t think it will change much because I think we already operate above the standard we’re looking to set. There are always some companies or employees at the lower end of the market that it will perhaps help weed out. I don’t think there will be a huge changeable benefit, certainly not to us. We may see some companies with in-house guards deciding to outsource which is good for anyone in the business.

CSM: What about the market situation we’re in now. In your conversations with counterparts in the U.S. do you have a feeling the market will be strong ”“ will we be affected by what’s going on in the U.S.?

Van Schepen: The spending in the states has dropped and we’d be naïve to think it’s not going to impact us at all here. A lot of the clients we’re dealing with would be less likely to be impacted by that. We’re doing a lot of work in the oil sands and oil is still hovering around $100 a barrel and those guys aren’t going to slow down.

CSM: What new services are you offering clients these days to increase business?

Van Schepen: Something I think we’re doing that is really leading edge include the live video monitoring and video patrol tours. We’re actually managing access for a couple of large clients remotely where our people are watching the camera and letting people in or not based on what they see.

CSM: Is that at a commercial facility?

Van Schepen: Yes. One of the things ADT was pleasantly surprised at when they came up and looked at Intercon was our monitoring centres. We offer much more tailored security solutions than just vanilla monitoring. I think there is some synergy that can happen as we roll it out to their client base and as they look at it more in the U.S.

CSM: What kind of client does that service appeal to most?

Van Schepen: It appeals to highly-secured commercial locations. On the video image retrieval we’re doing that for financial institutions so when they are doing fraud investigations that is all coming through our central stations. We’ve done some live monitoring looking for ATM skimming fraud where we have had people watching 24/7 three or four branches and had some pretty good success. It can also be applied at utilities, transportation, and those sorts of places. There’s still card access control but there’s also visual on top of that.

CSM: Is Intercon interested in going after business from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics?

Van Schepen: We have never gone after the one-shot deals like that. Whether it is SARS Stock or the Pope visiting, it really doesn’t line up well with how we run our business. We won’t leave our client base unprotected to go after a few quick dollars on a one-off event.

Certainly, with the labour market in Vancouver being as tight as it, is we have told them we aren’t interested in providing guards for that at all. We’re more interested on the systems side, but they seem to be taking a slow approach to doing anything on that. We’re expecting a whole wave of requirements will be issued closer to the Olympics for electronic security. On the guard side they have made it very clear they have some plan to take the guards from the local companies. We’re doing some things with the employment terms with our people to prevent them from working for us and doing that on the side without fully disclosing it to us. We wouldn’t put any of our clients at risk due to lack of coverage for a one-time thing like that. They are going to need to throw the net out a bit wider to fill that.