SECURITY CONCERN.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN BRINGS BUSINESS TO FIRM DEALING WITH ANGRY EMPLOYEES, ASSET PROTECTION

THE recent economic slump has turned Bob Westmore's part-time gig into his bread and butter.

Owner of Q:SIS, a security consulting and staffing firm, Westmore has begun providing risk management and security consulting services for companies dealing with hostile terminations and disgruntled employees.

"Even though we've been around for 15 years, we're basically re-inventing ourselves' said Westmore in his Chatsworth home office.

When he started Q:SIS, the focus was providing private investigations and personal bodyguard services. But the requests have changed.

"We've had a number of clients where we're basically helping them shut down their business. We try to make it as pleasant a transition as we can possibly make it, making sure that nobody goes 'postal' or does anything stupid."

The new strategy "floated into our harbor on its own," he said. "We haven't gone out and sold it or marketed it. And it wasn't until six months ago that I decided that's going to be the focus of what I do."

With employee morale at some companies declining faster than the Nasdaq, the possibility of a "situation" has increased significantly.

"There's been a lot of concern about workplace violence lately," said Barry Bradley, managing partner of Bradley & Gmelich and counsel for the California Association of Licensed Security Agencies, Guards & Associates. "As the unemployment rate and layoffs increase, you're going to have more disgruntled employees, and that increases the risk of something happening. And employers should be concerned."

Search to security

Westmore graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in accounting and business management and set about forming an executive search firm called Executive Consultants.

Q:SIS started as a natural extension of that business, he said, combined with his family connections -- his sister-in-law is a lieutenant at the Los Angeles Police Department and his brother-in-law is at the Santa Monica Police Department.

"We'd have these situations," Westmore said, "where people would say, 'I've got a rogue employee and I know you know people in the police department. can you help us out?'"

The "Q" in Q:SIS came as he was flipping through the dictionary: "Q" is defined by Webster's as a level of security above top secret. SIS stands for Security Industry Specialists.

Since the fall of the dot-coms, requests for protective services have increased. "Basically," Westmore said, "the scales kind of tipped. The business got so busy that we doubled our sales."

Employer concerns, Westmore said, are primarily safety, but protecting company assets runs a close second, especially at tech firms.

"One of the last dot-coms we did, people were taking computers, printers, circuit boards, modems -- anything that wasn't nailed down they were trying to take," he said. "This particular company was in the midst of re-organizing and starting another business. The attitude of the employees was, 'The owners made all the money and now they're shutting down the business and I don't have a job anymore, I'm going to take what I can get.' And when they're not happy with what they've got, that's when the threat starts happening."

Consulting conquests

Working out of his home, where he saves on overhead, Westmore said he has access to 140 part-time employees that he hires on a contract basis. Revenues have doubled over last year, in part because he tries to stay flexible by tailoring services.

"I don't have a pre-set thing I'm going to tell you. I'm going to go in and evaluate what you need. And if that happens to be security guards, then I'll go out and interview four or five security guard companies, have them write proposals and then evaluate them."

He doesn't sell or install security cameras or equipment, nor does he provide uniformed security guards. Should he decide uniformed guards the way to go, Westmore contacts several firms in order to find the best fit.

A typical price for his service is $55 an hour, but it can go as high as $100. "If an employer is worried about a break in, I'll hire some off-duty police officers to hang out all night, that's $50 an hour per person," he said. "But if I have to do a full-blown investigation, that's $100 an hour because of the level of expertise."

Spotlight

Q: SIS Corp.

Year Founded: 1985

Core Business: Security consulting, executive protection and private investigation

Revenue in 1999: $476,000

Revenue in 2000: $1 million

Revenue in 2001: $1.3 million (projected)

Employees in 2000: 1 (5 contract/parttime)

Employees in 2001: 1 (10 contract/parttime)

Goal: To expand service offerings

Driving Force: Making high level security professionals available to the general public for any given situation