| FEATURE ARTICLE, NOVEMBER 2006
OFFICE SECURITY: A MUST-HAVE AMENITY
Tenants’ needs drive heightened security in Texas office markets.
Jim Tam
Texas’ unofficial motto, “Don’t Mess with Texas,” has a deeper meaning with companies and professional firms across the state. Security is a heightened priority for property managers, landlords and office building tenants. Increasing security challenges in Texas translate into tenant anxieties about keeping their employees, data and facilities safe around-the-clock.
Today, security is high on the list of priorities for Texas tenants seeking office space, including law firms, pharmaceutical companies and financial institutions. Security, along with ample parking and convenient access to public transportation, is among the top amenities that tenants consider when moving into new office space or negotiating existing leases.
Threats Are Present in Many Forms
Large, sprawling buildings present a unique security challenge in Texas. With a generous supply of land in Texas, suburban buildings offer large floorplates with huge atriums and airy, open passages. While aesthetically pleasing, they present a unique challenge for tenants who seek tight control over who has access to their offices.
Everyday security threats, such as unwanted intrusions into offices for the purpose of stealing property and confidential data by “office creepers,” are also well-known problems for Texas businesses. Extraordinary threats to security and business continuity posed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other natural disasters have been highlighted during the past year.
Attracting and Retaining Tenants in a Buyer’s Market
During the past few years, high office vacancy rates in Texas have favored tenants instead of landlords. In Houston, following the collapse of Enron and its dependent businesses, the downtown vacancy rate skyrocketed to 25 percent. By the second quarter of 2006, the market had begun to recover, but office vacancy rates remained at 16.5 percent. The combination of high vacancy rates and a sharp increase in real estate taxes has driven building operating expenses up by 20 percent. Building owners and managers are now fiercely competing for tenants.
In the Texas buyer’s market, tenants are now well-educated about their choices and the amenities buildings will provide to attract and retain tenants. Building owners and landlords now offer better amenities packages, which showcase greater security measures, such as access control, secured parking areas and elevator card readers. High-quality building security helps landlords gain an advantage.
The Need for Suite Security Systems
The Benefits of Having an Expert Run Your Office Security System
— lower costs
— mitigate legal liability
— facilitate business continuity following a disaster
— achieve greater flexibility and control to accommodate changing tenant needs (i.e., expansion or suite reconfiguration)
— eliminate the headaches of running a security system 24/7 in-house
Source: Kastle Systems |
But can a building system alone meet tenants’ high security standards? The answer is no — even a state-of-the-art building access control system, once it lets a visitor enter a building, cannot prevent an intruder from entering a tenant suite.
Consider the case of the rogue employee who was terminated and attempts to re-enter the building after hours to sabotage files. Chances are the building’s security guard wouldn’t know he has been fired and would allow him to enter. An electronic security system installed in an office suite, which provides for real-time changes in user authorizations, wouldn’t permit that disgruntled employee to enter the tenant suite. Further, an electronic security system allows tenants to track employee and visitor traffic at any time, which is helpful in cases of theft.
A tenant suite security system must be customized to meet the unique requirements of each tenant’s business and office configuration. For example, some tenants face the challenge of securing their suite when an elevator opens directly into the reception area. One innovative solution is a “no-door security system,” which arms a space with an electronic motion detector. It provides alarm-free entry and egress with a card reader and motion sensor at the main entrance of a tenant space, with intrusion detectors installed at all entry points.
For user convenience, the suite security system can be integrated with the building security system. Users need only one card to access the building, parking garage, elevators, health club and office.
The Outsourcing Option for Building Owners and Tenants
Ensuring that a building or tenant security system remains functional and effective at all times is a daunting challenge. The investment in technology and staff expertise required to operate and manage an electronic system in-house on a 24/7 basis is an expensive distraction from the core business of the building owner, property manager and tenant.
Is there an alternative solution to running a security system in-house? Texas tenants, building owners and property managers have discovered that the most cost-effective and efficient solution to ensure a system runs properly is to outsource the ongoing operation and management of the electronic security system to professionals. An outsourced security provider is the single point of execution for all security functions, ranging from maintaining back-up copies of the user database in an offsite location, to seamlessly implementing software upgrades, reprogramming the system to lock doors on a specific holiday and monitoring the system 24/7 for intrusions, tamper conditions or propped doors.
Outsourcing Security has Raised Texas Standards for Security
In the competitive Texas market for commercial office space, building owners and property managers are motivated to attract and retain tenants by providing amenities that meet tenants’ highest priorities, such as state-of-the-art building security systems. Tenants recognize the importance of security at the suite level to fully secure their personnel, intellectual property and physical assets. The ability to outsource responsibility for security system operation and management to experts — at a lower cost — makes it easy for owners and tenants to raise security standards and eliminate vulnerabilities.
Jim Tam is a vice president with Kastle Systems in the southern region.
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