The brief
A liquor retailer has stores in several states where parking bays point straight at the shopfront. Store teams report near misses: a car mounting a low kerb, a trolley bay shunted into the window. Head office wants protection in, but the property team cannot say which stores need it first, and finance will not approve a number with nothing behind it.
The risk is accidental impact, not ram raids. That is settled first because it decides what kind of bollard is being bought. A store with a ram raid history goes to a security adviser as a separate scope.
Stage one: audit the higher risk stores
The audit has a fixed price and stands on its own, so agreeing to it does not commit anyone to the works. At each store the auditor records:
- Which bays point at the glass, the entry or the click and collect door
- The distance from the end of each bay to the shopfront
- Kerb height, or the lack of a kerb
- Where customers queue, wait and load trolleys
- Anything suggesting services under the slab, flagged for scanning
- Incidents and near misses the store team remembers
Each store gets a risk rating on a scale agreed before the first visit, and photos taken so that someone who has never been there can see the problem.
Stage two: freeze one specification
Before anything is priced, the bollard is written down once: galvanised steel, diameter, wall thickness, height, footing and finish. So is the spacing rule, which has to stop a car while still letting a pram, a wheelchair and a loaded trolley through.
Two mounting details cover most of the fleet: core drilled into a sound slab, or a base plate where the slab or the services below rule out drilling. The audit notes decide which one each store gets, before anyone arrives on site.
Stage three: a scope and a price for each store
| What the audit found | Rating | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Nose in bays facing the glass, no kerb | Highest | First funded year |
| Bays facing the entry, low kerb | High | First or second year, by cost |
| Parallel bays and a raised footpath | Lower | Recorded, priced, not yet funded |
| Slab condition or services unknown | Hold | Scan first, then price |
Because every store has its own price, the program can be split across financial years without being quoted again. The stores not funded this year are already measured and priced for the next.
Stage four: install and close out
Crews are registered on the retailer's contractor platform before the first store. The slab is scanned for services before any core is drilled. Where the entry is affected, work runs outside trading hours with the area barricaded, and the surface is made good before the store opens.
Each store closes with a photo completion report: the bays before, the bollards after, and the specification installed. The budget owner can sign the store off without visiting it.
