Incorporating Physical Security Solutions into your Construction, Refurbishment & Fit Out Projects

  • November 5, 2019
  • Posted by: admin
  • Category: Uncategorized
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I remember watching Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams (1989) and have always resonated with his famous line, ‘if you build it, he will come’. In that case, it was referring to a famous baseball player. Move forward to 2017 and reverse the sentiment to ‘if you don’t build it, they will come‘ and that is a key tenant around the ethos of designing effective physical security solutions into your new or existing infrastructure projects and facilities.

To reinforce the principle of ‘if you don’t build it, they will come‘, I remember as a young police officer, attending thousands of break and enter incidents and providing more than my fair share of security advice. Without fail, the most common questions asked by the victims was ‘why did they target my place and what can I do in the future to prevent it?’ The simple answer was that, more often than not, the businesses or residences that were targeted by offenders were the ones with limited or no layers of security in and around their property.

It isn’t a myth that criminals often conduct hostile reconnaissance or some level of planning before they commit an offence. Rest assured, a criminal will happily target a property which appears to have limited / no security and is easy pickings before they attempt to target a property which has clearly invested in overt security solutions and have engendered a challenge culture within their workforce.

Too often, we can neglect to appropriately invest in key threat and vulnerability mitigation strategies when designing new facilities or upgrading current facilities and it is predictably at these times that the ‘worst case scenario’ occurs and we end up in the unenviable position of having to quickly find funding (that often doesn’t exist) to spend on rapidly implementing physical security initiatives. Perhaps the regularly coined phrase ‘it has never happened so we’ll worry about it when it does’ sounds familiar?

Can you recall the last time you engaged a consultant to undertake a comprehensive physical building / precinct threat vulnerability assessment to ensure that your key assets (people / infrastructure / information) are effectively protected?

Without doubt, the best opportunity to undertake comprehensive vulnerability assessments is during the design phases of a new site development / refurbishment / office fit out – short of that, any time is a good time to get on the front foot. Identifying the key risks and vulnerabilities from the outset and designing effective security solutions to ensure that the workforce and infrastructure are protected is a critical element in every project and will enable the allocation of sufficient funding to deliver an outcome that will ensure effective security to provide deterrence, prevention, detection, delay and response solutions into the future.

Is the security of your business and the safety of your workforce something that is regularly discussed at board level? Is there a clear ownership of this risk? The safety and security of your people, infrastructure and information should be one of your paramount priorities because no business can operate effectively without it’s key assets?

I am not so sure that any of us could afford Kevin Costners consulting rate so feel free to contact me on 0433269388 if you believe that your business could profit from implementing strategies that will provide for the safety and security of your key assets.

A relatively small investment in considering key risk mitigation strategies now will be far more favourable to your board, investors and workforce than the potential financial and reputation loss if a critical incident impacts your key assets.

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