The situation
Faisandier Group runs medium-scale residential developments across the Wellington region at several sites simultaneously, managing design, construction, and sales. On a live construction site the security question is not what a thief takes. It is what the theft costs to put right.
The example the team gives is exact. A thief finds a length of electrical cable protruding from a concrete slab and cuts it off flush. The copper is worth about $10 as scrap. Recovering from it means breaking up the slab and running a new cable, at a cost of at least $15,000 once the delay is counted. The loss lands on the programme, then on the handover date, then on the buyer waiting for it.
Each site had a basic, unmonitored CCTV setup put in by the electrician. It gave an overview picture and nothing else. It recorded burglaries. It did not stop them. Across the portfolio, sites were being broken into 5 to 6 times a month.
The approach
A Blue Eagle engineer walked an example site with the Faisandier team before anything was specified. The purpose was to work out where a thief would actually enter, what they would target at each stage of the build, and what the consequence of each type of loss would be for the programme.
That is the difference the client bought. The standard offer in this market is a camera on a pole with a solar panel at the front of the site. It watches the entrance and leaves the rest of the boundary open, and because nobody is watching the footage in real time, it acts as a visual deterrent and nothing more.
Faisandier did not have to take that on trust. Blue Eagle ran the system on one site first, Faisandier’s largest development at the time. That trial produced multiple offenders deterred and at least one arrest, at which point the approach was rolled out across the remaining developments.
The delivery
Full perimeter, not a front gate. SwiftProtect™ combines AI-enabled cameras with portable perimeter detectors positioned around the site boundary. Coverage follows the whole perimeter rather than the entrance, because that is where entry happens.
AI flags it, a person verifies it, Police are dispatched. Detections go to the monitoring team with visual verification attached, so a response is based on someone having looked at what triggered the alert rather than on an alarm signal alone. Confirmed intrusions are escalated to Police with footage.
Monitored 24/7 for more than intruders. The same monitoring covers tampering, faults, power loss, damage, and device health in real time, and escalates each to the right person. A detector that has been knocked out of position is a problem the monitoring team knows about, not one the site discovers after a break-in.
Portable, because the site is not. Detection hardware moves as the build progresses and the risk profile changes. A development is a different site at frame stage than at fit-out, and the coverage moves with it.
The advantage
Break-ins down by around 90%
From 5 to 6 a month across the portfolio to roughly 1 every 2 months in total. That is the number the client uses.
The intrusions that do happen end differently
Since implementation, 95% of intruders have been deterred before causing damage, and in most cases Police have tracked and arrested the offender within 45 minutes. It has been 46 months since a theft caused more than $10,000 of damage. A detected intrusion that ends in an arrest is not the same event as a burglary discovered the next morning.
The cost case, modelled on a typical year
Blue Eagle modelled a typical year across around 5 developments. In that model, one site stripped of copper cabling runs to $60,000 to $100,000 in total losses against roughly $500 of scrap value. One site stripped of appliances runs to $80,000 to $150,000 against $10,000 to $20,000 at second-hand rates. Those two events alone put the annual exposure between $140,000 and $250,000, before petty theft and vandalism across the remaining sites. SwiftProtect™ across those sites costs less than a third of that exposure.
The honest trade-off
During a tighter economic period, Faisandier found a competitor at less than half the price and asked the obvious question. Blue Eagle compared the two side by side rather than defending the number: the cheaper option was a single camera at the front of the site with no monitoring included, which meant extremely limited coverage and no capability to interrupt anything in progress. The client trialled it on one site and stayed with SwiftProtect™, on results rather than on argument.
The ongoing relationship
Every Faisandier development runs on 24/7 SwiftProtect™ monitoring for the life of the build. The system watches for intrusion after hours and for its own health continuously, and events are escalated in real time to the monitoring team, then to the site or to Police depending on what has been verified.
Because coverage follows the portfolio rather than a single site, a new development is an extension of an existing arrangement rather than a new procurement. Faisandier now refers Blue Eagle to other developers dealing with the same problem.
“SwiftProtect™ reduced our site break-ins by 90%. We believe Blue Eagle’s presence has been a huge deterrent, and on the odd occasion we have had a break-in, the team have been quick to respond and get Police to site.”
Isaac Taylor, Project Manager, Faisandier Group
Faisandier Group needed site security that interrupts a burglary rather than recording one. If theft and vandalism are costing your programme more than they cost your balance sheet, the conversation starts with a site assessment.