Alarm Receiving Centre Monitoring

The SoloProtect Monitoring Centre - a state of the art environment, delivering the best possible response to your lone workers.

What is an ARC?

The SoloProtect Alarm Receiving Centre (often abbreviated to ‘ARC’ and may also be referred to as ‘Monitoring Centre’) is the state of the art facility that handles all of the lone worker alarms generated by SoloProtect users in the UK.

It is a 24/7/365 environment that is there to deliver class-leading monitoring to our customers. It is a highly equipped and robust environment to deliver efficient monitoring services, ongoing reliability and uptime, whilst ensuring the highest level of physical and cyber security protection for our alarm systems and customer data.

A credible personal safety solution is enabled by a lone worker device or application, but the response value of a solution is driven by the ARC, which determines the support it can elicit for the lone worker in need of assistance. The Alarm Receiving Centre is key to immediately supporting the device or app user, responsible for the swift management and understanding of any ‘Red Alert’ and escalating the incident appropriately on the lone worker’s behalf.

How does the Alarm Receiving Centre support a lone worker solution?

Upon activation by a user, a lone worker device or app will make an outbound call that will connect to our ARC as soon as possible in line with network availability. Within seconds, that call is answered and passed to an Alarm Receiving Centre Operator to commence listening to the audio captured and begin the process of ARC Alarm Verification.

A lone worker ARC is there to deliver the best possible response for a lone worker who may be on the receiving end of verbal or physical aggression, or injury due to accident or illness. The Alarm Receiving Centre Operator will manage the situation and stay with the user throughout its entirety, escalating appropriately to any supporting third parties including the Emergency Services, to deliver the best possible resolution for the worker.

As part of the process, a Monitoring Centre may:

• Attempt to contact the lone worker to determine if a Red Alert is genuine
• Attempt to establish location via GPS information or What3Words data
• Contact a nominated Escalation Contact to attempt to confirm the worker’s location
• Request attendance by the Emergency Services.

Value of the ARC Operator:

The systems and infrastructure of any alarm monitoring centre is key to its performance. But the people who work in the ARC- the Operators, Team Leaders and Management - are central to a successful alarm verification and escalation process.

SoloProtect ARC Operators are highly competent, SIA trained, and work within rigorous internal processes and procedures, whilst also adhering to Police guidelines regarding the escalation of all alarms.

Typical Response to an ARC Alarm:

The SoloProtect Alarm Receiving Centre will swiftly answer and assign any Red Alert call. This is an automated process to ensure it is highly efficient, minimising the amount of time a lone worker in distress is awaiting the alarm verification process to commence. In terms of an average response time, one of our ARC Operators is listening to the audio in just over four seconds from the call connection.

To successfully verify and establish the nature of the Red Alert, on average that will take just 41 seconds. From there, an operator is appropriately escalating the alert, in line with the demands of the situation.

SoloProtect Alarm Receiving Centre response times consistently exceed the requirements laid out in BS 8484 – The British Lone Worker Standard to which the SoloProtect lone worker solution is accredited.

SoloProtect ARC Infrastructure and Accreditation:

SoloProtect has invested in leading infrastructure design and systems technology to deliver a world-class monitoring centre that was the first lone worker dedicated UK ARC to achieve EN 50518 (European Alarm Standard) accreditation in 2015. It’s an extremely robust infrastructure designed to facilitate market-leading services, with highly efficient systems and dual redundancy systems architecture to maximise efficiencies and ensure uninterrupted service.

The company implemented an international personal safety monitoring infrastructure in 2015, allowing them to deliver alarm support to lone workers in nine different countries, including a 24/7 service and direct communication and dispatch to emergency personnel, depending on the severity of the situation.

SoloProtect is also accredited to the Cyber Essentials Plus scheme, and ISO 27001.

Further information

If you have any questions about SoloProtect's Alarm Receiving Centre monitoring, please get in touch using the form below: