Fire & Security In The Square Mile

The City is dominated by multi tenanted office towers, professional services floors and a dense band of bars and restaurants serving them. Nearly every job here is a fit out or refurbishment inside an occupied, managed building rather than a clean new build, which changes how the work has to be delivered.

In practice that means base build fire systems owned by the landlord that your demised floor must interface with correctly, managing agents who need consent paperwork before anyone lifts a ceiling tile, and goods lift bookings that dictate the programme more than the installation itself does. Add the City of London Corporation street access restrictions and the reality that most cores are listed or heavily serviced, and it becomes clear why wireless and hybrid solutions come up far more often here than in outer London.

Security priorities skew toward access control and audit trails rather than perimeter detection. Tenants want to know who accessed which floor and when, visitor management that works at reception without a queue, and a system that can be reconfigured every time a floor changes hands. Out of hours working is the norm rather than the exception.