Nothing is more sickening than showing up to work at the crack of dawn to find out that thieves have ripped you off. Tools can be replaced and materials can be reordered, but if a theft is substantial (and most construction site robberies are), the profit you were hoping for on that job has just walked out on you for good. The anger and frustration can be even more costly, eating away at you for a long time after the heist.

The police, although you should always call them, probably won’t have much to work with. “Some idiot with a pick up truck, I guess,” is likely to be the only suspect you can think of, unless you had security cameras in place (or know for sure it’s an inside job). Furthermore, since most police forces prioritize violent crime, your missing power tools or vanished just-delivered windows probably aren’t going to trigger a Crime-Scene-Investigation-type of response.

How common is jobsite theft? It’s an industry in itself. Although there is little agreement on the Canadian figure, it is well-documented that over $1-billion in tools and equipment alone (not including stolen building materials) go missing from U.S. construction sites annually. That probably equates to some $100-million in similar losses in this country. And that is just reported thefts, much of it from large, commercial jobsites. Anything under the typical small builder’s deductible of $500 is probably not reported, and many larger thefts go unreported by smaller contractors worried about their future insurance premiums.

Of course, insurance (see sidebar) won’t cover the time lost reordering materials and waiting for them to arrive. In the Toronto area, where subdivision theft is rampant, BILD (formerly the Greater Toronto Homebuilders Association) estimates that thieves add more than $1,000 to the cost of each new home constructed.

Almost anyone who has been ripped off on the job learns some valuable lessons. Unfortunately, most of those lessons start off with the words “Next time”. To avoid that, here are some theft deterrence tips you might want to employ on your current jobs before the “idiot with the pick up truck” makes a mental note of your location.
Basically, there are two ways to reduce jobsite theft: low-tech and high-tech. Let’s start with the low tech:

Low-tech deterrence
Police Records Checks
It’s not a happy thought, but many jobsite thefts are inside jobs perpetrated by either employees or subtrades. Before you hire anyone, consider getting a police records check (PRC) done on them. Costs vary, but in most areas of the country this service costs about $30 and takes three to five days. You can usually start the process by filling out a standard form available at your local police station. You will need the consent of your job applicant to do this check, but you can explain that it’s standard hiring policy at your firm (which it should be). A typical PRC will check local and national crime databases for convictions and charges pending but, obviously, it won’t tell you anything about the character of the individual.

Consider also doing PRC checks on subtrades. Asking a subtrade to agree to a PRC admittedly, is a lot more difficult. He’s not your employee, so it might raise hackles. But it would send a message of your determination to secure your jobsite.

No Trespassing Signs
Unfortunately, signs like this are the only jobsite security “equipment” some contractors use—and some brave or insane builders don’t even post signs. They should be clearly visible at night and they should display your after-hours phone numbers and company name. But don’t post deceptive signs like “Job Site Under Video Surveillance” if the site is not being watched, police and legal experts warn. If you tell the public your site is safer than it actually is, you can actually be found liable in the event of an accident to a passerby. Good signs are available from your local Crime Stoppers organization (www.crimestoppers.ca), which, as part of a big construction theft reduction campaign launched two years ago, has formed close partnerships with many regional home builder associations across Canada.

Fencing.
If residential contractors fenced off their jobs like the big commercial projects do, jobsite theft would drop substantially. But, as we all know, it’s not always practical, even where legally required. All the same, security-smart residential contractors will act just like their bigger, commercial-side brothers when it comes to job fencing. Fences create a psychological barrier to entry, even when they can be breached (which is 100 per cent of the time for even the most impressive barriers). Criminal psychologists say that there are two types of property theft: spur-of-the-moment (compulsive) and planned, with about 50/50 occurrence of each. Fences, by providing a visible barrier, help reduce the spur-of-the-moment robberies. They don’t help much if someone is determined to steal from you in particular, but they can act as a deterrent when they make your site look harder to break into than the one down the street with no fence. The great advantage of raising the security of your sites is not so much that they are clearly harder to break in to, but that the look harder to break in to. Thieves are notoriously eager to make their efforts as simple as possible.

Lighting
Again, spur-of-the-moment thefts—and vandalism—are reduced substantially by jobsite lighting, especially if you employ a motion-sensor light. Such lighting gives the impression that an intrusion has been detected and may also warn neighbours of potential intruders. The obvious weakness of motion-sensor lighting without central monitoring is the same as it is for car alarms: no one wants to get involved or believes it’s a real alarm.

Concealment
At the very least, materials should be stored behind a locked door, not in the living room in front of a window, which is very common. Lumber and building materials should be stacked, banded and covered. There are lockable brackets on the market that can be clamped onto stacked materials. They are not in wide usage, because of the obvious hassles. These gadgets deserve a second look, because studies have shown that building materials that will take more than 10 minutes to remove from a site are dramatically safer than material which can be removed within that time. For that reason, all building materials should be stored at the rear of a property, if not, in fact, locked in a garage or temporary storage facility.

Job Boxes & Storage Containers
One of the most honest sales pitches we’ve ever heard comes from Tom Schwalie, a product manager for Knaack, an Illinois-based manufacturer of secure storage equipment for trucks and jobsites: “Given enough time and ambition, people will get into anything. Banks get robbed, and they have armed guards.” But it’s hard to beat job boxes tied into a security system.

Just-in-Time Delivery.
An impressive 86 per cent of builders recently surveyed by the U.S.-based National Association of Home Builders practiced just-in-time delivery, with Friday deliveries kept to a bare minimum to avoid materials sitting uninstalled over the weekend.

Night Watchmen
At $20 an hour, and with over 100 “off” hours requiring staffing in an average week, only the tract builders and commercial sites use security guards on a regular basis. But they are worth considering on a short-term basis if you have custom-ordered, expensive building materials that are stacked up and only partly installed.

High-tech deterrence
Video surveillance
As little as ten years ago, installing video cameras at construction jobsites was a hassle because of the cabling required and because most jobsites didn’t have a hardwired Internet connection available. Now, with wireless technology, a few hundred dollars will buy you a remote IP (internet protocol) video camera from any number of manufacturers. Karen Wang, sales manager at Security City in Concord, Ont., says her retail outlet can outfit a contractor with a single IP video camera for as little as $149, including software. The pictures can be sent, wirelessly, to any computer, and motion-detection options are available.

A couple of hundred dollars. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. Effective video security is not about a cheap camera; it is about the 24-hour monitoring of what that camera is seeing. Someone needs to be viewing those images, and you might need multiple cameras to cover a jobsite properly. Also, the cameras must provide very high-quality images if they are going to actually help the police catch a jobsite theif (most webcams don’t). And finally, the cameras must be specially designed if they are going to work in the extremes of a Canadian winter.

“Our systems are designed to replace security guards on-site,” Sommer says. “Security guards are often ineffective, anyway, especially given the size of many subdivisions.” For fees that can range anywhere between $2,700 and $5,000 a month for the big tract builders, depending on the number of cameras needed (12 to 24 are common), UCITonline will provide a network of specially developed cameras that are so sharp they can zoom in and make a license plate readable from far away. The cameras are viewed and controlled, 24-7, by the company’s monitoring company in Napanee, Ont. Sommer says he has about 50 major clients at present and monitors about 100 sites in Southern Ontario. He plans to open a Calgary office later this year.

Like a higher-end security system for a home, UCITonline will call police if there is a crime in progress. The company advertises that it averaged two arrests per week in 2007. But clearly, the company has not yet targeted its systems at the smaller or custom homebuilder or renovator doing one or two projects at a time.

Hi-tech for the smaller jobsite
So who does have the inexpensive, high-tech anti-theft solution for the builder of renovations and custom homes? One company that has made an attempt to get into this market is Dewalt, which launched its SiteLock system in 2005. SiteLock consists of stainless steel locking cables (for winding around ladders, machinery, materials, etc.), cable locks and up to 48 motion sensor devices (which can be attached to job boxes/containers or individual items) that send signals to a central base unit. If the signals are interrupted (meaning a cable has been cut, a lock has been destroyed or forced open, or a motion sensor has been moved) the base unit emits a loud siren, strobe lights go off, and the contractor is notified by cellphone. Third party monitoring of the system is also available, as with built-in home or office alarm systems. SiteLock’s main asset is its easy portability to the next jobsite.
Still, it’s not cheap. A stripped-down SiteLock system (with only a single motion sensor) will cost you just over $1,000, and a more typical system, with enough motion sensors to cover an entire jobsite, will set you back $2,000 to $3,000, not including monitoring fees. And there are rumours in the trade that Dewalt may not be selling SiteLock much longer. A similar system is available from another company, Tattletale (www.tattletalealarm.com), which may step in to fill the market niche if Dewalt does, in fact, get out of SiteLock.

GPS
Putting GPS units into heavy construction equipment is now standard practice for many larger construction firms. Some insurers even require it. But GPS technology can be used for much smaller items than backhoes. Dewalt’s MobileLock system has GPS units that can be hidden in items such as refrigerators and air conditioners. If they are moved or tampered with, up to three people will be automatically alerted by cellphone or email. By logging onto a DeWalt web page, the actual location of the stolen item can be seen, allowing police legal access to retrieve it (and use their handcuffs, hopefully) without the need for a search warrant.

The most common job-site thefts
Tools -- Back when power tools were lower tech, and perhaps less desirable, the best advice was to put them in lockboxes at the end of the workday. Now, with higher-end cordless tools having more technology in them than your first car, lockboxes and even jobsite storage units aren’t always safe enough. “We own $150,000 worth of power tools and we take regular inventory,” says Dave Anderchek, owner of 17-employee JABA Construction in Saskatoon. “Year before last, we ‘lost’ about $9,000 worth of them, mostly routers, belt sanders and hammer drills, so we changed a lot of our policies. All tools come out of our houses at the end of every day.” JABA is also considering doing what more and more contracting firms with multiple employees are doing: requiring employees to own their own power tools, which dramatically reduces losses. JABA will pay for all repairs and service that the tool requires. In the meantime, like any security-conscious contractor, all JABA’s tools are tagged with a highly-visible company colour and engraved in at least three different spots with company identification.

Copper -- While it has never been considered a precious metal. copper has tripled in price in the last five years, so you’d better guard that stuff like gold. In fact, jobsite theft of copper—including the ripping out of installed wire and pipe—has reached staggering proportions. That’s because, as a study by the Copper Development Association attests, the average single family home in North America contains 439 pounds of copper, two-thirds of it wiring and pipe. At a market value of $3.50 per pound in Canada, that’s more than $1,500 in copper per dwelling.
Obviously, tract home jobsites are the biggest magnet for copper thieves since these developments usually consist of multiple empty units in isolated areas. But even custom homebuilders working in a built-up area can see their copper disappear. Just ask Art Mudd, a supervisor for Albi Homes in Calgary. “We just had two units where they cut the 200-amp copper cable from the house to the street. It was live—unbelievable,” Mudd says. “ The police told us they would check the local scrap yards. What else could they say?”
But copper thieves don’t even need a scrapyard any more. If you are so inclined, you can sell stolen copper pipe and wire on trading websites like eBay or Craigslist. (To verify this yourself, just go to eBay and search for copper pipe or wire. You will find disturbing quantities of short lengths for sale, just like the ones Art Mudd is missing. This is not to say these are all stolen items. But think about it.)
Of course, it’s the utility companies that own the mother lodes of copper. It’s just not as easy to steal it from them—as a would-be copper-bandit found out in Pickering, Ont. in January. The 32-year-old man was found dead on top of a power transformer, killed by 44,000 volts that traveled through the bolt cutters in his hand as he cut deep into the copper coil of his dreams. ($3.50 per pound, folks.)

Heavy Equipment -- Like stolen cars, the black market for stolen heavy equipment is massive. According to the U.S.-based National Equipment Register, 60 per cent of all jobsite equipment thefts involve three types of equipment: skid steer loaders, backhoes and small to medium-sized tractors. But since GPS technology has come along, that 60 per cent number is dropping, sharply.

Windows and Doors -- Never mind the custom-sizes, that won’t make quality windows and doors any less desirable to thieves. “People will just build their addition, or whatever, to fit the size of the windows they’ve stolen,” Anderchuk says.

Vehicles -- A vehicle is stolen every three minutes in Canada. And, according to Statistics Canada, almost ten per cent of those thefts involved construction vehicles.

Appliances -- Unless installation is occurring in an occupied unit, it goes without saying that all appliances, including air conditioners, must be stored off-site. Some contractors go even further and store the doors of appliances at different locations from the main units.

A word on insurance
The difference between actual cash value and replacement cost insurance policies for builders is complex, so before you experience a jobsite theft, make sure you understand what your policy covers you for, advises Dawna Rae Hicks of Insurance Portfolio Inc., an insurance brokerage servicing many residential contractors in the Toronto area.

Insurance that covers jobsite theft is called “floater form” insurance (a floater means coverage that travels with you from jobsite to jobsite). Ideally, you should not only have floaters that cover your tools and equipment, you should also protect your uninstalled building materials on-site with an “installation floater.”

Floaters vary widely from insurer to insurer. Make sure you have the right kind. If thousands of dollars worth of power tools go missing from your job, you don’t want to find out after the fact that you have an ACV (actual cash value) floater rather than a replacement-cost floater, Hicks says. With an ACV floater, you will only get reimbursed for the depreciated value of a stolen item, based on its estimated remaining lifespan. As you can imagine, for older equipment this might be only a fraction of the replacement cost, which is why replacement-cost insurance is more expensive. Be aware, Hicks cautions, that replacement-cost floaters are usually only available for tools and equipment that are no more than five years old. On-site building materials, for which depreciation is negligible, are usually insured on an ACV basis.