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SP&T News Integrator of the Year 2024: Met-Scan Canada rising to the occasion

Met-Scan Canada is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

Reflecting on those first two decades, company CEO Azin Tabrizi is proud of how far Met-Scan has come, while eagerly anticipating the changes that will set it on a path for future growth.

Met-Scan was founded by her father, Ahmad Tabrizi, and father-in-law, Rick Holder, as an engineering consulting company in 2004. The company soon pivoted over to the security world when it became clear that there were clientele seeking those types of solutions.

A veteran of the Bell organization, Holder had experience in television media and familiarity with broadcast standards. His expertise lent itself well to surveillance camera technology, another visual medium.

The timing of the switch over to CCTV was ideal, says Tabrizi, as security was beginning its transition from analogue signals to IP. “We had a group of engineers that really understand [that technology] and they brought that to the security world,” says Tabrizi, adding that the company has continued to maintain a strong discipline in IT networking technology, including fibre and wireless.

With a background in the pharmaceutical industry, and a technology-focused MBA, Tabrizi initially joined Met-Scan part-time to help with the operational and financial side of the business. She took over the role of CEO six years ago as her father-in-law retired and her father moved into a part-time position as company chairman.

For the first 10 years of its existence, Met-Scan was purely focused on CCTV. As the company’s clientele shifted towards wanting a single source to fulfill their security integration needs, Met-Scan expanded into access control and intrusion solutions.

Today, the company is on the cusp of major growth. A Toronto business with an Ontario customer base, Met-Scan decided the time was right to expand across Canada. In the last 18 months, Met-Scan has been adding customers across the country through regional partnerships.

“Over the last year or so, we are working with partners across Canada. We [now] have clients nationally,” explains Antoinette Modica, Met-Scan’s chief operating officer. “We’ve set up some really good relationships.”

RISE and shine

Tabrizi attributes Met-Scan’s two decades of success to its foundational principles. The company operates according to its “RISE” motto:

• Resilience
• Integrity
• Sustainable innovation
• Empowerment

“We pride ourselves on the fact that our clients are long-term clients. We’ve always been able to provide them very high quality work and gone above and beyond what they initially expected from us,” says Tabrizi, referring to the Met-Scan reputation for resilience.

As for integrity, she says that customers also appreciate honesty, transparency and a high level of ethics when it comes to business practices.

Sustainable innovation refers to future-proofing a security set-up and protecting the client’s investment. “We are not a ‘cookie cutter’ house that will give you something that just meets your requirements today — it will meet your requirements in the future,” explains Tabrizi.

Clients may not even know what their needs might be in the future, she adds, so Met-Scan will provide them with consultation that takes this into consideration and advise accordingly.

Finally, empowerment: “We firmly believe in training our customers, so they understand what we’re able to give them and empowering them to be able to make those educated decisions for themselves independently with our guidance,” says Tabrizi.

Met-Scan provides services to a variety of different clients including enterprise, government and other public sector organizations. A Met-Scan client with very specific needs is the Toronto Zoo, which has worked with the company for the last two years.

“We had a larger project coming up and it was time for us to refresh our security systems at the zoo, starting with our camera systems,” explains Toronto Zoo supervisor of safety and security Graham Birtles.

The zoo has greatly expanded its camera-count with Axis Communications technology and upgraded its video management systems with Milestone Systems. The zoo has also utilized Met-Scan’s services for intercoms and access control.

The Toronto Zoo is a unique customer, with a mix of indoor and outdoor environments and requirements that are particular to the zoo’s animals and their habitats. A high level of customization is required, and surveillance must fulfill a variety of needs including security, marketing analytics, guest and staff safety, as well as the safety of the animals.

“We have a great relationship with Met-Scan. They’re very professional,” says Birtles. “They understand they have to work around our schedule and our animals’ schedules … the nuances of running a zoo.”

Investing in employees

Met-Scan’s RISE philosophy also applies to its employees. In addition to perks like flexible work hours, monthly social events and semi-annual company dinners, Met-Scan takes a serious approach to training and upskilling.

Met-Scan describes itself as principally a security design engineering firm and this is reflected in the training standards it maintains in its technical staff.

“Every single technician and engineer that we have — when they’re deployed [in the field] and touching a piece of technology, they have been trained on that technology. They see the level of confidence we have in them, as we’re investing the time and money in them getting those certifications,” says Tabrizi.

Met-Scan also has a number of professional engineers on staff, most of whom earned their P.Eng certifications while employed with the company. “The level of confidence we have in them is reciprocated back to us. I alway tell people, you’ve got to trust your team members. If you trust them, they’ll trust you back,” says Tabrizi.

Leadership and diversity

In addition to a focus on professionalism and skills development, Met-Scan has also made a commitment to promoting diversity among its ranks.

When Tabrizi moved over to the security industry full-time, she was struck by how few women she encountered. “It was shocking,” she says.

Since taking over as CEO, Tabrizi made hiring women a priority “because I wasn’t seeing any.” Today, 70 per cent of the company’s leaders are women — something that is still very unusual in the security business.

“I am hoping we have an impact on that, and in the next generation we’ll see more and more women, not only in the engineering field but in leadership roles as well,” she says. Some of the staff she has hired hadn’t even considered a job in security before, mainly because they weren’t aware such jobs even existed.

Raising awareness is paramount, she says, particularly since there are many highly skilled jobs available in security that are going unfilled.

To help address this, Met-Scan has collaborated with education partners like Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) and the University of Waterloo.

Next steps

The security industry is going through a period of rapid technical development and expanding into new areas such as the application of AI and the optimization of data. Security technology can be operationalized beyond the security and safety use-cases they were originally designed for, notes Tabrizi. Security tools are also sensors that generate vast quantities of data.

“At the end of the day, data is only valuable if you can apply it to specific things. [It’s about] shifting that mindset for the customer. You can take that security asset above and beyond…your security needs,” she says.

As an integrator you have to move faster than the manufacturers, and ahead of the trends so you can present the latest solutions to customers, adds Modica. You have to think how technology can best be leveraged to get the most out of your investment.

As the company sets its sights on optimizing technology integration for clients and growing its business across Canada, it is also developing its own products in-house. Met-Scan is currently working on AI-driven software that can be integrated with a video management system.

Integrators have a unique appreciation of customer pain points, says Tabrizi. Developing products that would address those pain points “just makes a lot of sense.”

Entering its third decade of business, Met-Scan will continue with the philosophy that has sustained it for the first two, says Tabrizi.

“The key for me, as we grow, is maintaining the ‘RISE’ aspect of who we are.”

Images courtesy Met-Scan Canada.