A by-way of outsourcing

In the margins of the Hancock affair, I learn of yet another corporation  - Emcor - which is big in the outsourcing of buildings and their facilities, but of which I had not previously heard. The sort of people who charge you £5,000 for changing a light bulb on a Christmas tree in your reception area because you forgot to put that particular service into your contract with them and you can only get it done by raising a contract change notice (a CCN to cognoscenti), for which they can charge more or less what they please. And you can't change the bulb yourself because they have all the step ladders and the key of the cupboard in which they are kept. And anyway, what about workplace & liability insurance for a dangerous activity of this sort?

In this particular case, Emcor is responsible for the security cameras in important areas in a building presently occupied by the Department of Health. Important areas which include the offices of important people. I imagine the cameras are rather like the ones you get these days in suburban trains in outer London and tube trains in inner London. All over the place and mostly forgotten about by the passengers, or in this case the occupants.

Security cameras which are on more or less all the time and generating huge amounts of footage which has to be managed. Very easy to get a bit careless about that sort of thing - witness the ease with which Chelsea Manning was able to lift huge amounts of stuff for the Wikileaks people.

PS: the Christmas story was lifted from the Treasury, after my time there, where the then Permanent Secretary had to source and climb the step ladder for himself. 

Reference 1: https://www.emcorgroup.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.emcoruk.com/. 'Here at EMCOR, we're driven by values. We use them as a metric, a guideline, a way to ensure that each activity we engage in is aligned with the principles we believe in. We bring our best to our organization everyday, and our values speak to that commitment'. Terrible lot of guff flying about the world these days.

Reference 3: https://www.emcorgroup.com/application/files/4816/2211/2051/Form_SD_May_2021.pdf. Otherwise, the conflict minerals report for the calendar year ended December 31, 2020. A rather technical version of the slavery reports you find on lots of corporate websites. The source of the snap above.