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Guardian Lone Worker Meets Industry Standards

Preston, Lancashire 2nd March 2010 – Preston-based technology firm, SDS Technology Group today announced that their lone worker solution Guardian has been redesigned to meet new lone worker device requirements published by the British Standards Institution with the aim of making Guardian much more effective.

At the end of 2009, the British Standards Institution published the BS8484 code of practice for the provision of lone workers. This is a standard that covers the operation and requirements of a lone worker service provider in the UK. The BS8484 code of practice pertains to suppliers of lone worker device services, either for their own operations or to their customers. It provides the principles and operational procedures to be implemented by an alarm receiving centre so that controllers can validate activation messages received from lone worker devices and assist response services when reacting to requests for assistance from lone workers. BS8484 will also help to minimize the number of false alarms received by response services. The code of practice covers three main parts: a) requirements of a lone worker device, b) requirements of a lone worker alarm receiving centre, and c) requirements of a lone worker emergency response service.

The BSI announced that the lone worker devices must fulfil 11 different requirements, including having the capability to initiate an audio connection to an alarm receiving centre, be remotely accessed by the controller, and have the means to minimise chances of accidental alarm activation.

“Our Blackberry application currently conforms to all the 11 requirements published by the BSI and I believe we are the first and only UK lone worker provider to do so. We plan to make the Windows Mobile application to conform to the new requirements in the very near future”, says David Donnachie.

The Guardian lone worker solution allows users to keep existing hardware and integrate the software to a designated device so that users only need to carry one device. This coupled with the Guardian Web Platform offers a highly detailed management of lone working deployments.

Company director, Andrew Hardman, explains: “The new guidelines published by the BSI will have a significant impact on the current lone worker industry and we believe that it is essential that Guardian meets and complies with these standards”.