About Ansador Group | UK's First SIaaS Provider

Our story

Trust is earned.
Built for what's next.

Francis Davey founded Ansador in 1982 with a single proposition: protect British buildings to a standard the industry had stopped delivering. For four decades that proposition ran unchanged. Hospitals, headquarters, halls of residence, museums, broadcasters, councils, the kind of estates where failure is not an option. Francis built a reputation that earned the industry's most demanding work without ever needing to chase it.

Our position on the heritage is straightforward. We are proud to have started in 1982. We do not lean on it. The years between 2025 and 2030 are going to reshape this industry more than the previous four decades combined. The estates that will get this right are the ones that act now, and the partners they will be working with in 2030 are being chosen now.

"AI is not a future trend. It is an extinction-level event for slow movers. The organisations that hesitate will vanish in quarters, not decades."

Fred Voccola, Chairman & CEO, SimPro Group · The Coming Disruption (2025)

Alex Davey took the business through a management buyout in 2021. Daniel Lucas joined in 2022 and stepped up to Group Managing Director in 2024 as Alex moved to Group CEO. Paul Smith, who started as a project manager in 2020, stepped into Group Operations Director in the same transition. Francis Davey continues on the board as Non-Executive Director, holding the institutional memory that no new hire could replicate. Three serving directors who have all done the work themselves, and the founder still in the room.

"We're in a position right now to take charge of this and reimagine our future ourselves. If we wait, it will be done for us, and we won't like that answer."

Carolyn Dewar, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

That insight reshaped how we thought about the next decade of the business. So we restructured it. Ansador now runs as a group: a clean trading structure with two specialist trading divisions and an internal AI-First operating layer that handles the work that used to consume people's time. AI is not bolted onto the business. It is the spine of the operating model. Every quote, every job pack, every compliance evidence cycle, every customer-service interaction runs through purpose-built AI agents inside our own platform. We did not adopt AI. We rebuilt the business around it.

In 2026 we launched Security Infrastructure as a Service, the UK's first proposition of its kind. Our APAC HQ in Makati, Manila runs proactive monitoring across client estates around the clock. We are growing the Group as specialists per division, not generalists across the board. People do not pay for generalists anymore. They pay for the people who know one thing better than anyone else.

Read our transparency-by-design statement, including how we use AI with your data →

Alex Davey and Daniel Lucas.

The journey

From a London integrator to a continental partner network.

Specialist security integration begins out of the City and the West End. A single founding promise: deliver to a standard the volume players have stopped meeting. Francis is one of the first people in the UK industry to understand electronic locking and the early generation of access control technology. The City and West End remain the heart of the business for the next four decades.

Electronic access control comes to the fore as a serious commercial discipline, and Francis is among the first integrators in the UK doing it properly. The technical depth Ansador builds across this period becomes the foundation of everything that follows.

Ansador delivers a fully integrated CCTV, access control, intruder alarm and intercom platform across a central London estate. The technology environment of the time meant integration was a craft problem solved with physical alarm inputs and serial protocol bridges, not the open APIs that came later. Ansador was integrating systems before the rest of the industry was sure what integration meant.

Ansador adds fire detection and life safety systems to the capability set, treating them with the same standard of design, integration and ongoing service that already defined the security work. Fire detection, sprinkler and dry riser monitoring, evacuation systems, the full life-safety brief, all delivered to the same uncompromising standard.

Reach extends beyond London to UK-wide delivery. Ansador becomes a Gent by Honeywell partner, our premium fire alarm brand, while remaining product-agnostic across open-protocol systems and the wider integrator estate.

A London-headquartered client asks Ansador to handle works at their Stockholm office. We say yes, and we mean it. That single project becomes the seed of what is now a continental delivery footprint, supporting clients with estates in Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam and beyond. London is our home. We follow our clients to wherever their buildings are.

Ansador secures National Security Inspectorate Gold standard across both the security and fire businesses. The most rigorous accreditation in the UK industry. The reference clients begin to compound.

Paul Smith joins as a project manager. Over the next four years he progresses through every operational role, the same path Alex took two decades earlier, building the technical and operational depth that will eventually take him to Group Operations Director.

Alex Davey acquires the business through a management buyout, twenty years on from joining as an engineer. The plan is not to expand the existing model. The plan is to reinvent what a fire and security integrator can be.

Daniel joins in June 2022 to build the commercial foundation for what comes next. Career background in facilities management, fit-out, and global account rollouts. The leadership team strengthens ahead of the strategic transformation.

European delivery accelerates. Rather than pretending to be a continental firm, we build a curated network of partners across Europe and further afield, organised into Tier 1 Elite, Tier 2 Trusted and Tier 3 Approved standards. Partners handle first fix, second fix, planned maintenance and basic servicing. The Ansador Promise sits behind every job. Coordinating global clients in 2005 was a full-time problem. Today we solve it through a network we have built deliberately, not pretended to.

September 2024. Daniel steps up to Group Managing Director with full operational accountability. Alex moves to Group CEO to lead group strategy and the AI-First transformation. Paul Smith steps into Group Operations Director, leading delivery across every client estate. Promoting from within is how we build leadership at Ansador. We do things our way.

Group restructure to support the AI transformation. AGDD Limited established as the holding company for Ansador Services and Ansador Projects. APAC HQ opens in Makati, Manila. Purpose-built AI agents start replacing manual back-office processes inside our own business. The internal model becomes the proof of concept for what we are about to bring to clients.

Ansador becomes the first UK fire and security integrator to launch Security Infrastructure as a Service. Predictive maintenance, AI monitoring, continuous compliance evidence, all delivered to client estates under a single subscription contract. The next chapter begins.

A promise we keep

47% / 53%

Female to male, across the Group

In 2022 we set ourselves the goal of a 50/50 gender balance. We are mostly there. We do not say much about it because it sits inside the bigger promise we make to ourselves and our clients, which is to keep the promises we make.

In the community

The work alongside the work.

Security infrastructure exists because people need to be safe. The same is true of the work we support outside our commercial contracts. The buildings we protect are the same buildings where spiking, harassment, gender-based violence, and the everyday pressures on people's mental health play out, and the gender imbalance in our industry is part of the same story. The organisations below are not adjacent to what Ansador does. They sit inside it. Members of our team are personally and actively involved in each one.

Ansador leadership volunteering with the Evelina London Children's Charity team at Tom's @ Shepherd Hall.

Alex Davey volunteering in the kitchen at Tom's @ Shepherd Hall.

Alex Davey and Tracey Cohen at Tom's @ Shepherd Hall, in support of the Evelina London Children's Charity.

Volunteering in the kitchen of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, in support of the Evelina London Children’s Charity. Charity days are built into how the Ansador team works.

Evelina London Children’s Charity NHS Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust

Gender balance in technical sectors

The WISE CampaignWomen into Science and Engineering, now part of the IET Charity
Women in Fire SafetyIndustry-led recognition for women across the fire and security sector
Women Of Our TimeUK community for women's professional development

Safeguarding and public protection

Stamp Out SpikingUK's leading charity dedicated to ending drink spiking
Centre for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and GirlsResearch, advocacy, and prevention of gender-based violence
Consortium for the Prevention of SuicideCross-sector collaboration on suicide prevention

Professional standards

The Security InstituteUK's chartered professional body for security professionals

What we believe

Three values. Held without compromise.

Most companies have values that live on a poster. Ours are the basis of every hiring decision, every contract negotiation, and every site visit. They are how we have kept the trust of demanding clients since 1982.

People first

AI is the spine of how we operate, not a person we hire. The repetitive back-office work that used to consume people's time runs through purpose-built AI agents inside our own platform. That changes who we hire and what they do. Every person we employ at Ansador is client-facing. There is no back-of-house team that never speaks to a client. That is the future, and it is by design.

Accountable

If we said we would do it, it gets done. If we got it wrong, we say so. Every person at Ansador has the freedom to make the right call for the client, the right call for the business, and the right call for their own family at home, and the accountability that comes with it. Outcome-based contracts are an extension of how we already operate, not a marketing position.

Work together

One team across London HQ and Manila APAC HQ. One team across engineering, operations, and client service. One team with our clients. We bring the team together in person twice a year, properly, because remote-first does not mean remote-only.

By the team

Engineers, leaders, parents.

A view of how Ansador actually runs. Senior leadership in the room. People at home with their families. Engineers on site. The same team across all of it.

Senior leadership team gathering at Daniel Lucas's home. — Leadership offsite. Twice a year, properly.

Daniel Lucas with his daughters in high-vis on site. — Real lives behind the work.

Daniel Lucas and Tracey Cohen at an industry awards evening. — Industry recognition, quietly received.

Leadership

The people accountable.

A senior team with deep operational experience. Not consultants who landed last year, engineers, operators and finance leaders with thousands of hours on Ansador sites between them.

Alex Davey

Group CEO

Twenty years at Ansador, progressing from engineer to CEO. Acquired the business through a management buyout in 2021 and led the strategic shift to SIaaS and AI-First operations. Drives the long-term vision and key client relationships.

Daniel Lucas

Group Managing Director

Day-to-day operational lead with sign-off authority on every major project. Career background in facilities management, fit-out, and global account rollouts. The operational mind that turns strategy into delivery and keeps the business running through transformation.

Paul Smith

Group Operations Director

Delivery lead across every client estate. Joined Ansador as a project manager in 2020 and progressed through the operational team to Group Operations Director. The technical and operational authority on complex live-environment installations.

Francis Davey

Non-Executive Director & Founder

Founded Ansador in 1982 and built its reputation across four decades. Now serves as Non-Executive Director, providing the institutional memory and industry judgement that no amount of new hires could replace.

London headquartered.Working wherever our clients are.

Trust is earned.
Built for what's next.

From a London integrator to a continental partner network.

The work alongside the work.