Plimsoll analysis reveals UK security industry to be “outperforming” major European markets

A new study from global market analyst Plimsoll Publishing indicates that the UK’s security industry is outperforming major European markets as average sales growth reaches 4.7%.

Plimsoll’s findings – in the wake of analysing companies’ financial performance in the UK, French, Italian and Spanish security markets – reveals that businesses in the UK are outpacing their European counterparts in the sales department.

On average, each company in the UK is growing at 4.7%, followed by Spanish companies at 3.2% with Italian and French companies growing at 2.2% and 0.8% respectively.

Region	Average company sales growth	Average company pre-tax profit margin
UK	4.7%	2.1%
France	0.8%	3.9%
Italy	2.2%	1%
Spain	3.2%	1.8%

Despite UK companies growing the fastest, and firms in France seemingly struggling for growth, it appears the French are actually deriving the best return on their bottom line with average margins at 4%.

David Pattison, Plimsoll’s senior analyst, said: “The challenge for any company is to balance sales growth and commercial strength. It appears growth in the UK market is occurring profitably as average margins have risen in the latest year. However, it’s the French market that’s of real interest. It appears the French market is growing slowly but, with the majority of companies appearing to be adverse to debt, it allows these security companies to make healthy margins.

Pattison added: “Clearly, the ability to maximise their resources and drive the company harder is proving key to their competitiveness.”

This new Plimsoll study individually analyses the largest and most important security companies across Europe and allows key decision-makers to gain a unique insight into each company’s strengths and weaknesses in one language and currency.

*To understand which companies are growing the fastest and to see who’s making profit, the Plimsoll European Security Study is available to buy for £800 +VAT. Readers of this article are entitled to a £50 discount and can purchase the report by e-mailing chrisg@plimsoll.co.uk and quoting the reference number PREURO

Ideagen launches enterprise safety management and incident reporting software dubbed Ideagen Coruson

Software firm Ideagen has launched Ideagen Coruson – a “definitive and visionary” re-brand of its enterprise safety management and incident reporting software. Gael Enlighten, a cloud-based software solution used by some of the world’s leading brands including Virgin Trains, Telefonica and Haeco Group, will now be known as Ideagen Coruson.

The re-brand project comes as Ideagen seeks to align its product portfolio following several successful acquisitions in recent years. The Gael Enlighten software was part of the Intellectual Property purchased in the £18 million acquisition of Gael Ltd back in December 2014.

Ideagen CEO David Hornsby said the time had come to ‘retire’ the Gael brand. “We’re delighted to announce the renaming of Gael Enlighten to Ideagen Coruson which will modernise the product brand and bring it into conformity with the rest of our product suite. As an important part of Ideagen’s portfolio of governance, risk and compliance applications, Coruson has matured over the past two years and has many high-profile customers. The application is fully ‘productised’, commercialised and generally available and, given its visionary nature, the time has come to retire the Gael brand name and launch the definitive version of the product brand.”

Hornsby added: “These are exciting times for Ideagen as an organisation and we’re looking forward to Ideagen Coruson playing an integral role in the company’s future success.”

Ideagen Coruson is currently used by some of the world’s leading brands as well as organisations with extensive global reach including the UK Rail Safety and Standards Board, Haeco, Virgin Trains, Johnson Matthey, Air Transat, Telefonica and A2 Milk.

Ben Dorks, Ideagen’s chief customer officer, explained to Risk UK: “This is an exciting announcement and an ambitiously significant re-brand of one of our most prominent, market-leading products. We’re delighted that the re-branding project has been welcomed by our customers. Ideagen Coruson comes with a fresh new colour palette and appearance, but the popular architecture and roadmap of the software remains entirely the same. This cements its place as the most user-friendly enterprise cloud safety and incident reporting software on the market.”

Corporate Risk Associates awarded £70,000 R&D grant for nuclear power plant research

A human factors, safety and risk consultancy that provides services to safety critical industries has been awarded an R&D grant worth almost £70,000 which will see the company make a significant contribution towards improving the safety and operations of civil nuclear power plants.

Thanks to the grant plus some internal funding, UK-based Corporate Risk Associates (CRA) will now be conducting a comprehensive research project designed to significantly enhance the industry’s understanding of potential system failures in nuclear power plants, aiding both plant safety and the uninterrupted supply of electricity.

The grant has been awarded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency which works with people, companies and partner organisations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy. The research will be completed throughout the course of this year.

Speaking about the grant, Jasbir Sidhu (CEO and founder of CRA) said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded this grant which will see CRA develop a process to generate realistic reliability estimates of SMART Control and Instrumentation (SC&I) in order to increase the safety levels within nuclear power plants.”

SC&I are intelligent control devices that employ programmable electronic components to collect and process data to enhance performance.

According to Singh, the industry uses assessments of the reliability of engineered systems to understand safety margins. The reliability of SC&I technology is difficult to substantiate due to the inclusion of software, and this leads to an assumption that it performs much worse than is indicated by operational experience.

Safety Integrity Levels

“Current methods adopted in the industry involve using high confidence values based on Safety Integrity Levels (SILs), as stipulated in standards such as IEC 61508/IEC 61513,” added Singh. “We firmly believe this current method doesn’t give a good indication of the ‘true’ reliability, as SIL figures are considered to be highly conservative. As such, we’re extremely passionate about this project and developing a process that can ensure future decisions are based on realistic reliability estimates.”

Singh went on to state: “It’s great that we’ve received this grant from Innovate UK in recognition of the significant impact this project will have on the nuclear, process, transportation and other high hazard industries where safety is, of course, of paramount importance. Looking ahead, this research will have a major impact on the understanding of risks from emerging and growing fields, such as Data Centres.”

The project will be led by experts at CRA, including the company’s principal consultant Ashraf El-Shanawany and consultants Francesca Brandford-Adams and Garth Rowlands, who’ll be researching the approach of Structured Expert Judgement.

Established in 2000, CRA boasts a team of 40 technical consultants. The company prides itself on managing safety, reliability and risk across the nuclear, rail, defence and process industries, where delivering a robust risk analysis is part of the licensing processes.

The company has recently been awarded work with major organisations, including the Office of Nuclear Regulation, EDF Energy and Babcock International.

Abloy UK to host access control-focused seminar at ISEC 2017

Abloy UK is running a seminar at ISEC 2017 which is specifically designed to explain important changes to access control locking applications on fire and escape doors.

Taking place on 26 and 27 April in the Conference Centre, Citywest, Dublin, ISEC is Ireland’s long-established key event for the Irish security and fire industry.

The seminar will help delegates understand the minimum legal performance criteria for access control locking applications for fire and escape doors. This includes detail around EN 179 and EN 1125 – reinforced with new licencing requirements for locksmiths and installers in the Republic of Ireland through the Private Security Authority – and impending changes in local Building Regulations.

Pat Jefferies: commercial director at Abloy UK

Pat Jefferies, commercial director at Abloy UK, is presenting the seminar, and is retained by the British Standards Institution and CEN as the UK’s electric locking technical expert. During his presentation, Jefferies will also cover implementing the requirements of the Construction Products Directive, which is applicable throughout Europe.

Jefferies commented: “If you or your business supply, specify or install access control locking or blocking as part of a security system, you cannot afford to miss this seminar. I’ll be explaining the minimum performance criteria and the implications of getting the specification wrong.”

*ISEC 2017 is a free-to-attend event. For more information or to register visit www.isec.ie

**For further information on any of the products and services available from Abloy UK, please call 01902 364 500 or e-mail marketing@abloy.co.uk