Protection Prodigy

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Michael Fickes

Listen to what Alexander Calixto's boss has to say about him: “He's 28 years old and knows more of the industry and its products than anyone I have met who is supposed to have over 20 years of experience.”

That's what Gialia Colón, president of Act Security Systems in San Juan Puerto Rico, says about her operations manager. “He deserves to be recognized for being the youngest in the security industry to have sold, installed and provided service to more than 50 clients,” she continues.

At age 28, Calixto has been in the security business for just eight years, mostly in sales. He spent about five years selling alarm systems to residential customers. Calixto attributes his success there to the fact that competitors failed to provide residential customers with enough information about how their systems worked.

Three years ago, when he joined Act, he says that he discovered that customer education was even worse on the commercial side.

“When I came here, I started to manage others and to train them to prospect for customers,” he says. “To train people, I had to get more into the technical details of the equipment. You have to learn the technology to do the job right.”

Knowing the technology makes for confident dealings with customers. Calixto, for example, took on a service call for a small restaurant downtown to replace a $500 videocassette recorder. While at the restaurant, he noticed construction work on the next block, working on what appeared to be a high-rise building. He wondered if the owner had retained a security integrator yet and went over to ask. As it turned out, the contractor was not responsible for security. Even so, Calixto left his card for the project manager.

It was one of those “nothing-ventured nothing-gained” initiatives that too few people ever think to attempt. The extra effort paid off big. Six months later, the project manager called Calixto and asked for a quote on a closed circuit television (CCTV) system for parking and common areas.

Called the Capital Office Building, the completed structure would rise 20 stories and rank as one of the tallest buildings in San Juan. It would house U.S. and local government agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service. The government agencies required that the building protect its tenants with security technology.

It was by far the biggest project that Calixto or, for that matter, Act had ever bid on. “I didn't have that much experience then, but I knew a lot of people that would help me,” he says.

Calixto submitted a $100,000 quote that included 18 pan/tilt/zoom cameras, 32 fixed cameras, and two digital video recorders (DVRs). Then he forgot about it.

More than a year later, the project manager phoned Calixto and invited him for an interview. “The project manager didn't know our company, and they were scared of our requirement for a 50 percent deposit,” Calixto says. “So I offered them a deal under which we would be paid as we progressed through different phases of the job.”

That solved the project manager's problem, and Calixto brought the job home to Act. “That was the biggest project we had gotten up until that time,” he says. “It was the turning point in our business.”

All that was left was to make the installation. As Calixto prepared his team, the firm's chief technician turned in his notice. Calixto asked the technician to complete the breakthrough project, but he refused.

“All of the others thought that they could not finish the job without him,” Colón says. “But Alex let him go, put on his boots and finished the project in the lead technician's place. In the end, the project was a success, and the client remains very satisfied.”

The client later recommended Act to tenants that wanted to install access control, alarms and panic buttons.

The Capital Office Building project has brought other large projects to Act. When Universidad Polytechnica de Puerto Rico hired a new security director, he turned out to be an old client of Calixto. He asked for help consolidating and integrating multiple access control systems at the school's research laboratories.

Calixto designed an access control system that would work on an IP platform tied together by fiber-optic cable. Calixto kept the security network separate from the school's primary network to prevent bandwidth problems.

“We integrated the system by installing the access control system with IP modules,” Calixto says. “Then we installed the software in the main building, where the security director can now view all the panels around the school.”

The original assignment went so well that Act is now expanding the system into every campus laboratory with more than $200,000 of equipment, an undertaking that will keep Act busy for another couple of years.

And of course, the boss is still very pleased with Calixto, saying: “Alex will be the next great thing in Puerto Rico.”

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