Security Guard Contracts: Finding Your Inner Lawyer

Reviewing security guard contracts is tedious, but necessary

July 19, 2007 — CSO — Contract review is tedious, particularly when it comes to going through all the fine print with a security guard provider. This can be especially problematic if your interaction (like mine) with contract guard agencies is for supplemental work only and not as a key component of your program. For todayâ¬"s extremely busy CSOâ¬and thatâ¬"s all the CSOs I knowâ¬there is little time for such painstaking work. But itâ¬"s crucial. Consider the following three scenarios:

Scenario one: I contacted our legal department and asked them to review a contract guard agreement. Legal asked how critical this was, because they were working on leases, licensing arrangements, workersâ¬" compensation issues, and SOX and SEC regulationsâ¬all things they clearly considered priorities. I asked them to review the contract as soon as possible, and received it back three months later.

Scenario two: Members of my team contacted our legal team and ended up in voice mail, where they left a message that they had an immediate need to employ a contract guard agency and needed the terms and conditions reviewed right away. They repeated their request a day later, this time sending the contract to the departmentâ¬"s primary paralegal to speed up the process. A week later, they heard back from one of our attorneys, who asked when they needed the contract back.

Scenario three: My team contacted a local guard provider that indicated it could have guards onsite the same day and didnâ¬"t need a contract.

Given scenarios one and two, it might be tempting to avoid the whole hassle and skip to scenario three. But you should always secure a contractâ¬regardless of the scope of services, the number of coverage hours and the duration of the engagement. Why? Simply put, contracts define expectations of service and protections, should something go wrong. A former CSO I know innocently engaged a service to cover a simple eight-hour assignment on very short notice. The guard assigned to the job ended up illegally detaining a customer, which led to a lawsuit that had to be worked out in court because there was no contract to protect his company from mistakes made by the contractor.

Your Contract Checklist

No contract means buyer beware. The CSOâ¬"s mission of protection should include protection against negligence and damages arising out of the provision of security services. I did some research and worked out some ways CSOs and their staffs can avoid common pitfalls with contract guard services.