Outsource Tel. creates security staffing firm

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--Outsource Telecom has historically serviced structured cabling contractors, supplying pre-qualified temporary wiring crews and placing full-time employees. “Then we started realizing that security companies all run their systems over low-voltage,” said John Lowell, Outsource Telecom chief executive officer, “so we started calling on security contractors and got quite a bit of business. Then we realized they needed technicians and it made me look at the whole building controls space.” That led, earlier this year, to the creation of Building Technology Staffing, a division of Outsource serving the security and fire space specifically from 10 offices across the country. John Seckman, vice president and general manager of the Rocky Mountain region for integrator Henry Bros. Electronics, said he used BTS’s services when he landed a job with Penrose St. Francis Health Center in Colorado Springs. “We just have a satellite office there,” he said, “which isn’t big enough to handle a job that size. So we got two people from BTS, one for a year, another for most of the year ... We would have had to hire two people, put them on the payroll, and then at the end of the job we probably wouldn’t have had work for them and would have had to lay them off.” “The enlightened user in our business,” said Lowell, “they see the biggest value in the time that they save, where they can spend their time on their core business, the stuff they’re good at. They can take that time that would have been spent placing ads and reviewing resumes and turn it into more projects that they walk, more bids that they get out there, more clients that they get in front of. If a client doesn’t have a very high value on their time, it doesn’t really work out.” Lowell said he generally either supplies a crew of installers to help a company hit a deadline, or supplies a higher-level systems technician on a temporary basis so the company can see if the employee works out. “They provide pre-qualified, drug-screened, driver-screened employees,” said Seckman, “and as much as you try to be diligent, the litmus test is when you put them out in the field and they work for you for a few months. And if they give me somebody who’s not satisfactory-which hasn’t happened yet, actually-well, no harm no foul. I don’t have to lay them off. I just get a bill once a month.”