Pye-Barker buys Priority One Security, adding 80-plus staff and four Southeast offices

Pye-Barker Fire & Safety has acquired Priority One Security of Greenville, S.C., adding more than 80 employees and four locations in South Carolina and Tennessee. SecurityInfoWatch reported the deal as Pye-Barker's latest Southeast expansion. Priority One has served customers for more than 25 years, and Pye-Barker's own release puts its national platform at more than 250 locations and roughly 8,000 employees.

For a facilities director in Greenville or Orangeburg whose access control and alarm monitoring run through Priority One, the practical change is who stands behind the contract. The technicians, according to both SecurityInfoWatch and the PR Newswire release, stay local. The parent company is now one of the largest fire and security services providers in the country, and one that Security Systems News reported closed 57 acquisitions in 2025 alone.

What Pye-Barker picked up in South Carolina and Tennessee

Priority One's offices are in Greenville, Orangeburg and Williamston, S.C., and Lenoir, Tenn., according to SecurityInfoWatch. The company sells security and fire alarm systems, access control, video surveillance, automation, entry systems and monitoring to both commercial and residential customers. Its reach extends across 15 states through those local branches and a national accounts division, per the PR Newswire announcement.

The PR Newswire release says Priority One's service reach extends across 15 states through both its local offices and a national accounts division.

Priority One has been a buyer itself. Security Systems News reported in April 2017 that the company acquired Blue Ridge Security Solutions of Anderson, S.C., according to an email to GSA Business Report from William R. Francis, president of Priority One Security.

William Francis Sr., Priority One's president and owner, said in the announcement that the company's aim for nearly 30 years has been to give families and businesses an experience rather than only a system, and that Pye-Barker's resources would let the team do more for existing customers. Bart Proctor, Pye-Barker's CEO, described Priority One as having a 30-year service reputation with thousands of customers and said the company would expand integrated life safety services across the Southeast, according to PR Newswire. Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough represented Pye-Barker; neither SecurityInfoWatch nor the release names counsel for the seller, and no financial terms were disclosed.

A 57-deal year, and a location count that keeps climbing

Security Systems News reported on March 18, 2026, that Pye-Barker lauded 57 acquisitions in 2025.

SecurityInfoWatch's company profile for Pye-Barker describes it as having nearly 200 locations. The March 2026 release on PR Newswire says more than 250.

The rankings are on record as well. The March release lists Pye-Barker at No. 849 on the Inc. 5000 and No. 4 on the SDM 100. PR Newswire also lists a Pye-Barker release titled around a No. 3 SDM 100 ranking at mid-year, and another announcing the acquisition of Suppression Systems, Inc., which that release describes as enhancing fire suppression services in the Pacific Northwest.

What changes for the customer holding a monitoring contract

The announcement's operational commitment is narrow and specific: Priority One's technicians continue serving their local markets with Pye-Barker's national resources behind them, per SecurityInfoWatch. Nothing in either account describes changes to monitoring center arrangements, service pricing or contract terms, and it would be wrong to infer any.

What the deal does establish is that Priority One's integration and monitoring work now sits inside a company that also does fire protection nationwide. For a property manager who currently splits fire alarm inspection, sprinkler service and security monitoring among separate vendors, that combination is the reason Pye-Barker describes itself as fully integrated. Whether a bundled arrangement makes sense for any given building depends on terms the sources do not cover.

The sharper question for a multi-site operator is about the national accounts division. If a company was using Priority One to cover locations well outside the Carolinas and Tennessee, it now has a vendor with branches in many of those states rather than a Greenville office dispatching at distance. That is a plausible upside, not a documented one; the sources say nothing about how national accounts will be serviced going forward.

One loose thread in the record

Both SecurityInfoWatch and the PR Newswire release describe Priority One as having served customers for more than 25 years, while Francis refers to nearly 30 years and Proctor to a 30-year reputation.

Pye-Barker's M&A contact on the release is Jeremy Bates, SVP of business development for M&A, and the company directs owners of fire and life safety businesses to pyebarkerfs.com/acquisitions.

Pye-Barker's own release points prospective sellers to pyebarkerfs.com/acquisitions and calls the company the industry's acquirer of choice, and its SecurityInfoWatch company profile says it remains actively engaged in exploring strategic acquisition opportunities.