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This month Simon Banks talks to Lucie Banham, Director of The Banham Group. Banham is the leading supplier of burglary and fire prevention systems in London and have been industry leaders since 1926.
Banham are advocates of helping to fix the skills gap, what inspired you to start the Banham Academy?
Banham have always had an informal apprenticeship policy going back to our inception – two of our current Directors started as apprentices themselves. As the Company grew, we needed a more structured approach and we also wanted to upskill our employees. Finding the right apprenticeship courses locally was frustrating and time consuming so we looked at our own resources internally to see what we could do. We knew we could provide the right training as our engineers are known as some of the best in the Industry. Once we got started, we discovered that other companies wanted to join our courses too and the Academy has grown beyond our expectations over the last 6 years. We are very proud to continue supporting young people into work.
What benefits does the Academy provide to your business?
It’s really important for the business to continue to support and grow talent to ensure a pipeline of future engineers not just for our own business but for the Industry as a whole. We strongly believe you must invest in young people and help guide them in their careers. Technology is moving so quickly now and the next generation are savvy and quick to learn all of the latest equipment and software.
Banham has been family owned and run for over 90 years. In a fast-paced technology industry has this legacy been useful?
Undoubtedly. You can only provide so much training and hands-on experience, it’s years of practice and knowledge building that creates true expertise. The average length of service of a Banham engineer is around 15 years and some have been with us for 30 years +. It’s great that they can teach but also still learn and be kept up to date. We are now into our fourth generation of customers, having been recommended by great grandparents to use Banham!
We hear about Cyber Security vulnerabilities regularly, how has Banham expanded its services to protect the core business and customers?
We have always considered ourselves as the one-stop shop for all security products and services and we embrace research and development in IT and Cyber Security. However, we are always cautious when it comes to protecting the core business and our customers and have robust DR, resiliency and back-ups in place. We adopt the same approach of caution to releasing any new products and test vigorously before any new releases. We still believe in the ethos that there is nothing better than electronic security supported by physical security, because if all else fails and there is a cyber vulnerability, your physical security should not be breached.
“We fitted our first CSL Connected today to the Risco Agility panel. Fully monitored and linked to the cloud for access via the app.”
Linkedin post from Craig Foot at Protect My Property – Feb 28
