Zaun accredits installers to roll out ArmaWeave
Above: Zaun sales and marketing director Chris Plimley (left) celebrates the accreditation with the Crime & Fire team (from second left), director Craig Watts, director Pete Rushforth, Chris Singer and Stuart Fletcher.
ArmaWeave fencing – which is unique to Zaun – is produced on the world’s largest steel loom at the company’s West Midlands manufacturing base.
Crime & Fire Defence Systems engineers were trained in the installation of the product and have installed kilometres of the high-security woven fencing at utilities sites across the country over the last two years.
Now Zaun has formally accredited Crime & Fire as approved installers of the product, along with Zaun Group subsidiary Binns Fencing.
Zaun has established the new installer scheme because of increasing requests from customers to recommend contractors with suitable installation, quality and safety standards.
ArmaWeave has some unique properties which give it distinct advantages but require some fresh skills and techniques to install. For example, unlike welded mesh the panels can rake up and down hills so the installers require new skills to square up or rake the panels.
The wire of the panels has a tensile strength typically more than double welded panels so special methods are required for cutting the panels during installation.
Zaun will be training installation teams on the properties and tolerances of ArmaWeave and how it is manufactured. It is aimed exclusively at fencers with proven skills and experience in high security fencing work and deals only with the specific new skills and techniques required to install ArmaWeave.
Trainers will share the secrets of installation methods Zaun has developed over time for ArmaWeave to make best use of the properties of the high security fabric.
The training will be for experienced individuals sponsored by a company which can demonstrate its professionalism through membership of a relevant trade organisation and valid UKAS accredited ISO9001 certification. The certificate of training will only be valid while the individual is working for the host company. This will ensure properly trained individuals working under proper quality management install the product.
The plan is to increase the adoption of ArmaWeave as the standard for secure sites of Critical National Infrastructure – such as utilities, data centres and nuclear sites – while ensuring consistent installation quality.
Zaun sales and marketing director Chris Plimley said: "We invested in the steel loom ahead of the sales in the belief we could produce an innovative product installers, specifiers and high security facility managers would want.
"That has proven to be so true that we need to expand the number of contractors trained in installing it correctly."
ArmaWeave’s unique properties add substantial resistance to cutting attacks with hand, powered and non-contact tools. The tight mesh pattern provides no climbing aids, again limiting the potential for intrusion.
ArmaWeave CPNI enhanced is tested to the very highest standards and can be combined with other intruder systems, electronics and access control to create the optimum integrated fencing solution.
It has also been approved for use with a range of microphonic PID cable systems after testing for many months at an MoD facility.
