Home security is important to people living in the city.

We lock our front door; we lock our back door; we lock our garage door.  We have bars in our sliders.  We set alarms.  Some of us can even see who is at our front door with our phone.  We have lights all around our property.  In luxury neighbourhoods there are security patrols. Protecting our fortress from intrusion is a priority.

Bringing a similar mindset to providing security for commercial and industrial buildings protects your investment and makes them more attractive to tenants.  Although in that case your family is not at risk if there is a break in, it is prudent to do everything you can to prevent theft, property damage, vandalism, graffiti and other problems from affecting your property.

Up north, we have a number of systems designed to secure our building.

The first is a FOB system that opens the doors at a set time each day and locks them at a set time each afternoon or evening.  This is an efficient system when it works and we have found some competent suppliers who can fix it when it doesn't.  The benefit here is that we can program the system to stay closed on holidays and long weekends.  We can also monitor who is entering at which times based on the codes on each individual FOB.  Thus if we no longer want someone to have access we can just disable their FOB.

The second system is that we have a number of doors that are locked all the time.  Our tenants must have a key to enter those doors.  The general public cannot enter through that area.  This is a recent change.  We used to have doors that you could unlock and leave open, but the challenge was that our tenants would enter through that door but might exit through a different door and hence the entry door would remain unlocked.  The change over to doors that automatically stay locked all day has eliminated that problem.

The third measure of security we provide is a night watchman who lives on site.  He is always there and can advise us if there is any unusual activity occurring in the building at night.  The building has automatic motion lights inside so if there is any movement the lights come on, which triggers an inquiry into what is happening.

The fourth measure of security is a security patrol that checks that all doors are secured each night.  This is a fail safe as the security person alerts us to any problems that are occurring on a regular basis, like doors being unlocked at night, allowing us to devise a solution to correct that problem.  The patrol also lets us know if any of our security measures are not working for any reason.  It gives peace of mind that everything is safe and secure for the evening.

The final measure is ample lighting around the building all night long, discouraging any illicit activity.

Thus far the above measures have made the building safe and secure, providing peace of mind to the owners and a feeling of comfort to our tenants.

You notice the absence of light.  You notice darkness.  And darkness creates fear and uncertainty around a building and also encourages theft and illicit behaviour.

I remember in a prior life owning a building on Jarvis Street in Toronto.  There was an alleyway that was dark at night and the darkness in that location formed a perfect place for prostitution and drug use.  We tackled the problem by adding flood lights with cages around them.  All of a sudden night was as bright as day and the night action ended.

This summer at my family's Muskoka building, one of our tenant's landscape trailers was stolen at night.   According to the O.P.P. there were a number of similar thefts in the area.  We have tried to tackle the problem by ensuring that all of our exterior lights are working and are bright. Those exterior lights include lights above doorways, flood lights mounted on the building, motion sensors, and bright light standards in the parking lot.

We also have security routines at night.  Each night we conduct a security patrol to ensure that all doors are locked and all lights are working.  We also have a night watchman that lives on site along with video monitoring at each of the doors.  One of our neighbours who plans to grow marijuana pursuant to a federal license intends to have 24 hour video monitoring to ensure his building's security.

By ensuring that your building is brightly lit at night and by implementing security measures, you can discourage most forms of illicit activities.