Knoxville wins Brink's heart

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.--Brink's Home Security announced plans last month to build a new alarm monitoring and customer care facility here, planning to invest more than $10 million in a 50,000-square-foot facility that is slated to be opened by early 2006. Brink's Home Security, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Brink's Company, currently operates one central station in Irving, Texas, where the company is based, and a back-up facility in Carrollton, Texas. In the United States and western Canada, the company monitors more than 920,000 mostly residential accounts. By having a second central station, Brink's lessens its vulnerability to natural disasters and provides a solid platform for future growth. This includes new service offerings, in terms of both technology and the types of customers the company targets. The company purchased a 9.6-acre parcel of land where the facility will be built and approximately 400 monitoring operators and customer care specialists will be employed. Construction begins this month, followed by the hiring of leadership positions this summer and monitoring personnel in the fourth quarter. "They had a total package," according to Carole Vanyo, senior vice president of customer operations at Brink's Home Security, on why the company picked this location over the seven other cities it visited. "Infrastructure of the area was vital for us," agreed chief information officer Rob Trotter. Trotter said among the key factors of the area was the availability of broadband, the weather patterns do not reflect a high-risk rate for natural disaster and the new site does not share the same power grid as Brink's other central station. "We wanted to make sure we had a separate power grid in the second site," he said. The central station will launch with GE Infrastructure, Security's MASterMind monitoring software, a platform the company has used for more than eight years. For employees, the company plans to offer a media center and an Internet cafe. Trotter said the Knoxville central will have the necessary equipment to feature emerging monitoring applications. However, at this time, the company will not roll out any services beyond what is already offered at its existing location.