Guardian Protection moves into new HQ

CRANBERRY, Penn.--Guardian Protection Services is wrapping up its move this month into a new 90,000-square-foot facility, just 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and five minutes from all the major arteries that converge here. Located on a 14-acre parcel with "room available for further growth," the building took one year to complete, said Russ Cersosimo, chief executive officer. An existing commercial building on the grounds was completely gutted and renovated. In addition to being a slick new headquarters, Cersosimo said the building was designed around the flow of Guardian's operations. "We are a centralized operation, with all of our common functions--from the central station to the scheduling and dispatching of service calls nationwide--done out of this building." "It will be much more amicable for us to handle our day-to-day operations; before we were broken up into two buildings," he said. "We also have room to grow into the building," he said. As of mid-March, the central station, executive management, dealer department, data entry, scheduling, accounting, marketing, legal, recruiting, proactive telemarketing, builder administration and account retention were moved into the building. The sales and operations department expected to move in by the end of April. The former headquarters was located just on the outskirts of downtown Pittsburgh. For certain employees, such as call center staffers, Guardian's had to compete with other downtown Pittsburgh businesses. The new locale gives them access to a labor pool of workers who do not want to commute into the city, Cersosimo said. One of the largest residential security companies in the country, with offices in New Jersey, Ohio, Arizona, Illinois and Indiana, Guardian has 425 people working out of its headquarters. Cersosimo said it continues to hire more people, and is "always looking for talent." "On just our account base, we grew 17 percent over the last year and we expect to grow 20 percent this year," he said. Cersomiso said Joe Colosimo, president of Guardian, acted as project manager of the renovation and move. Steve Schwartz of the service department and Emil Parent, the central station manager, "along with numerous other managers," did all of the integration work in-house. "The wiring and automation work was all done by our personnel," Cersosimo said, "and it turned out just the way we wanted it."