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Throughout Downtown Toronto, cranes and concrete pours are now an established fixture of the street-level experience. With construction continuing to re-make much of the urban core, updates of site activity across the city are a staple of UrbanToronto's editorial mandate. From shoring and excavation to balcony glass installation and interior appointments, construction site activity is typically closely tracked here on UrbanToronto, with regular updates of the projects re-shaping the city. Yet, while our coverage is comprehensive in detailing construction progress, it doesn't quite capture everything that's happening on-site.
Past the cranes, trucks, shoring rigs, concrete, and various heavy machinery, security operations are also ubiquitous across the city's construction sites, serving to prevent—and address—theft, vandalism, and trespassing. "You see all sorts of things," LivePatrol's Daniel Carloni explains, with everything from "teenagers sneaking in with a six-pack of beer" to sex work, six-figure theft, dumping, arson, and—of course—graffiti, picked up by guards and cameras.
"Copper wire theft is definitely a big one," Carloni adds, explaining that the relatively high value of copper makes it a frequent target for theft. While crude late night 'break and enters' are certainly common, "some of the operations we've seen have also been highly sophisticated," he notes, describing a recent incident where a "crew came dressed as construction workers, carefully co-ordinating a theft with the site's schedule."
That incident was caught by LivePatrol's cameras, with Carloni noting that modern high-res cameras can not only easily pick up licence plates, but also allow remote supervisors to engage with intruders directly. Using infra-red technology and video analytics, "our cameras know whether you are a person, animal, object, or vehicle," he says, adding that many sites boast technology programmed to allow officers to "talk down through speakerphones installed on site, or to activate siren and strobe systems to deter intruders."
Carloni explains that these sophisticated, remote-operated camera set-ups are increasingly becoming the norm, with contemporary site security often bearing little resemblance to the lingering image of a solitary guard monitoring grainy video feeds from an on-site booth. Instead, site-specific combinations of on-site guards, remote video monitoring, and mobile fleets of security vehicles, are becoming the standard.
For LivePatrol, the focus is on remote-video surveillance, which Carloni stresses goes far beyond the CCTV installations that have long been a mainstay of construction site security. "Each site is quite customized," he explains, with the positioning and programming of cameras co-ordinated to suit each site, and consinously re-examined as construction continues. "We program the cameras to recognize their surroundings with each new site, so that they learn to disregard regular construction activity while focusing in on potential threats."
"It's not just about preventing losses, though," Carloni notes. "In a lot of situations, especially with young people trespassing to climb cranes or party on construction sites, having a comprehensive security setup is an important safety measure," he stresses. "We've seen a little bit of everything," he adds, with a number of break-ins—some of which are comically inept—captured on the company's Instagram feed.
While Live Patrol's model provides a hybrid of remote 24-hour video monitoring and occasional guard presence, with Carloni stresses is still "an important element" for many sites, other companies are also working to evolve the industry. As new technology continues to provide alternatives to relatively costly guard services, a combination of video monitoring and mobile guarding—characterized by roving fleets of vehicles—is shaping industry practices.
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