Rapid Response Monitoring, Syracuse, N.Y., is in the beginning stages of opening a new central station in the Western United States. This is a move that the company has been planning for some time, but with the addition of Morgan Hertel as vice president of operations, is moving along quickly.

“It was something they wanted to do and hadn’t found the right person to do it,” Hertel said. “They had started some preliminary work on site locations and general design. And when I became available and decided to join the team, it was natural fit. It worked out in a very unique way. I don’t think it was something either of us were considering six months ago but it worked out.”

Hertel was most recently vice president and general manager at Mace CS. He related, “My reason for leaving Mace had nothing to do with the actual operation itself. It was more a decision for me that work in the public sector was just not a place I wanted to be in anymore. The company continues to do good work. I exited from there and took a month and a half off and spent the time at home with the family. And then I started to look for manufacturers, central stations, and organizations that were really committed to doing something different in the alarm business. When I got to Rapid, I found a real commitment to doing what they say they’re going to do and several parts and pieces to build out a West coast facility.”

In the next several months, Rapid plans to choose a location for the new central station and begin building. “We’re going through looking at real estate opportunities in California and Arizona,” Hertel said. “Sometime in the next 30 days or so we’ll decide on the new location. We’ll start a small regional office while we build out the bigger facility over the next year.” Hertel added the new central station will be around 20,000 sq. feet in area and will be a load-sharing, full-on central station to mirror the company’s established facility in Syracuse.

In his new position, Hertel is responsible for all operations, both in the east and west coasts. That entails monitoring, dealer support, training, and IT. He is also in charge of a dedicated software development group.

“We’ve got half a dozen really high-level, industry-changing projects that we’re working on right now that have nothing to do with the West Coast facility and are just ways of doing things so very differently than they have been done in this business,” Hertel commented. “So the next year is going to be very exciting. We have a great software developing team and some very good automation partners we work with. It’s everything from service offerings for dealers and their end users that nobody else has or does as well as processes and methods and ways of handling alarm traffic and mobile traffic.”