Today Dominion Breweries became the first manufacturing site in New Zealand to benefit from the improved quality of on-site security delivered by putting staff onto the Segway Personal Transporter (PT). DB also has the honour of receiving the very first of the new Segway Patroller models to be deployed in the Southern Hemisphere, marking another pioneering 'first' for Segway New Zealand and its clients. FIRST Security Guard Service provides on-site security for DB, and they purchased this Patroller unit for use by their team on this site. The benefits of the Segway PT are well-recognised by FIRST, who already operate a half-dozen PTs at various University and Shopping Mall sites around New Zealand. DB's 13 hectare plant at Manukau, Auckland, consists of large buildings housing equipment and finished product, giant tanks, offices, carparks, and a large pond which serves as a water reservoir situated in an otherwise undeveloped paddock where a herd of goats are kept to control pasture. From the first day with the Patroller hard at work, two benefits were obvious to staff and management. Firstly, the 2.5 kilometer perimeter could be circumnavigated in under 20 minutes, versus an hour on foot. This has enabled the number of patrols per hour to be tripled without increasing staff, and the overall 'security presence' has been multiplied many times. Most importantly, it closes the "window of opportunity" for an intruder to enter, steal and make good their escape undetected almost impossibly short.

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About 35 electronic "touch points" (iButtons) are imbedded around the site, to record that all sectors of the site have been visited on every round. Officers can touch these, as well as open and close padlocked gates - all without the rider needing to dismount the Patroller. The terrain around the route varies from concrete and tar seal, grass lawn, rough shingled tracks and muddy paths in the goat paddock - and the Segway PT i2 model has no trouble transversing the lot! At first, the client wondered if the x2 model would be required on this site, but was impressed by the i2's capability (and greater range-per-charge). Broken glass from dropped bottles is a feature of this site, and the i2's puncture-resistant tyres with 'Slime' added provide good serviceability despite this hazard. Secondly, the Patroller enables the guard on patrol to respond rapidly when an incident is reported somewhere else on the site. "I can get from one corner of the site to the other in 2 minutes on the Segway Patroller" says guard Wesley, "compared with up to 8 minutes if I had to run. Then, once I've dealt with the incident I can get back to where I was up to on the perimeter patrol just as quickly. In practice, this means a lot because we get call-out incidents occurring many times a day, and they used to create long gaps in our perimeter enforcement. But not anymore. Quite simply, the Segway is a magical device!" The Patroller's super-reflective shields and built-in reflectivity make it highly visible at all times, as Dominion Breweries is a 24 hour operation. The flashing amber-white front lights and red rear light are activated at the push of a button to enhance presence when patrolling inside warehouses where forklifts are moving about. Read more about the Dominion Breweries deployment in the three page feature in the current issue of Security Today magazine. Contact us for a reprint of this article, and previous articles about the use of Segway PTs around NZ in both Security Today and NZ Security Magazines.