Yesterday morning, over 50 key security professionals gathered at the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation’s (SMBC) Queen Victoria Street building in The City of London to hear David Evans, Jonathan Crabb and Andrew Clancy offer their views on the current state of play in relation to security and business continuity issues surrounding the 2012 Games.
Among the audience were representatives from – of course – Advance Security (including managing director Richard Bailey, who introduced the day, and national operations director Donna Alexander), host SMBC, Knightsbridge Guarding, Nomura and Ultimate Security.
Clients in attendance included Mike Alexander, head of security and safety at Henderson Global Investors and chairman of ASIS International’s UK Chapter 208.
As many of you will be aware, David Evans is the BSIA’s project director for 2012 and, as such, is responsible for bringing together all of the great work being done by the Trade Association’s members in relation to next year’s Games. Evans also serves as the conduit between those members and organisations including the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA).
Recently awarded the prestigious Imbert Prize by the Association of Security Consultants for his sterling efforts in relation to the Bridging The Gap scheme, Evans began his talk with an overview of Games venues both in Greater London and outside the Capital. This left none of the audience in any doubt as to the sheer scale of the event and the necessary security undertakings it commands.
The ‘Central Zone’ venues include Earls Court (where the volleyball tournament will take place), Lord’s Cricket Ground – venue for the archery – and Hyde Park, home to the triathlon.
Beach volleyball takes place at no less a venue than Horseguards Parade.
Of course, the Aquatics Centre will host the swimming, diving and water polo, etc, with the key athletics events – notably the men’s 100 metres final – staged at the main Olympic Park in Stratford (adjacent to which the new Westfield Shopping Centre has just opened its doors amid much commercial fanfare).
Away from the Capital, Hampden Park on the outskirts of Glasgow is home to some of the football (as is Old Trafford and Villa Park).
Parallel events include the Olympic Torch Relay and Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – which runs from 2-5 June next summer.
Evans was swift to point out that there are a great many sponsors involved with the 2012 Games, among them major brands such as Coca Cola, GE, McDonalds, VISA, Adidas, BMW, BP, BT, Cadbury, Cisco and British Airways.
Safety and Security Communications Group
An interesting point to note for the business community is that there’s a cross-sector Safety and Security Communications Group now in place. Evans told the audience that this involves the Metropolitan Police Service, the Olympic Security Directorate (more of which anon), the Greater London Authority, NaCTSO, London First and various industry associations.
Its aim, as Evans stated, is to “ensure businesses are safety and security aware before, during and after the Olympic Games by improving communications between the public and private sector on security matters.”
According to Evans, the group will offer routine preparation messages, warning and information messages and response and recovery messages.
The key industry sectors and groupings being targeted for this information exchange will be the finance and insurance community, retail, hotels, the night-time economy across the board, IT, utilities and petrochemicals, property and construction, tourism, arts and sport, health and pharmaceuticals as well as transport. That’s aside from all of the major London Boroughs, of course.
The routine preparation messages contain appropriate advice, information on planned activities, reviews of lessons learned and notification of any adjustments to either process or policy.
“The warning and information messages,” said Evans, “will be looking at any pan-London emergencies. Tactical advisors will assess what information relates to the business community as fed from Gold Command in London. What’s certain is that there’ll be a consistent message with one voice.”
In terms of the response and recovery messages, timelines will clearly be critical. Messages here could include the ‘what?/where?/when?’ details for any incident, information on the activities of the emergency services, basic guidance, overviews of any impact assessments and material concerning proportionate actions that may need to be taken at any given juncture.
A section of the Metropolitan Police Service website is being dedicated to Olympic Games-related information, there’ll be a Neighbourhood Link messaging system in place and business/organisation Intranets up-and-running.
Not surprisingly, social media will play its part in communications (via alerts on Twitter, etc) while regular bridge calls are scheduled to keep business leaders in the community updated on what’s happening around and about their own organisations.
‘Keep Your Business Running’
Jonathan Crabb – head of development services at URS/Scott Wilson – is supporting the ODA through the Travel Advice for Business Programme which is targeted at all those concerns likely to be affected by the Games.
Like David Evans, Crabb prefaced his delivery – which proceeded under the banner ‘Keep Your Business Running’ – with some more facts about the 2012 Olympics (which, if you didn’t already know, run from 27 July through to 9 September).
For example, a whopping GB pound 6.5 billion is being spent on transport upgrades alone. Not surprising, one supposes, when you learn that on the busiest competition days transport will be needed to ferry anything between 500,000 and 550,000 spectators as well as over 50,000 members of ‘The Olympic Family’.
The aptly-named ‘Live Sites’ – including the aforementioned Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Potters Field (by City Hall) – could well attract anything up to 60,000 spectators.
The Travel Advice for Business Programme was described by Crabb as a “business influencer campaign”. Launched last November, it’s framed by Site-Specific Advice (SSA) and underpinned by the slogan: ‘The world might stop for the Games. Your business shouldn’t’.
In terms of the transport ‘hotspots’ in London, modelling has afforded a clear picture of where demand will exceed supply (evidenced on the day by way of a map of how the City will be affected).
Need to address “significant additional disruption”
Tens of thousands of people are expected to travel through the City area as they visit the Games and, put simply, without appropriate action from businesses to reduce the number of journeys made there could be “significant additional disruption” to normal travel, at key stations and at key times.
The Central Line and Northern Line as well as the Docklands Light Railway could face delays, so too Bank, London Bridge and Liverpool Street (all of which are massively busy stations on the London Underground in any case).
On top of that, there’s the Olympic Route Network along Upper and Lower Thames Street to be taken into consideration.
As Jonathan Crabb stressed: “London 2012 wants to help you, the business community, plan and prepare for this.”
The SSA programme is limited to a number of organisations and determined by location and employee numbers. In practice, it involves six days of support from a specialist London 2012 travel advisor and focuses on the ‘essential Rs’: the overall need to travel or re-time, re-route or revise modes of travel.
“The advisors will work with your organisation to analyse existing practices, understand how the Games will impact your business and develop a Games Time Action Plan,” asserted Crabb.
“That Action Plan,” he continued, “may focus on staff travel to work and between locations, the provision of supplies to your organisation and business visitors or customers and their access to your business.”
What are the next steps?
At the end of his discussion points, Crabb evaluated the next steps for businesses taking part in the programme.
Essentially, organisations are requested to provide Crabb with the name of their nominated contact. By return, Crabb will then send details of the specialist advisor appointed to the organisation.
An introductory meeting is arranged with that advisor, who will duly analyse existing practices and assess how much the Games might impact the host business.
The Games Time Action Plan is then developed and approved within the host business and any necessary work required to allow implementation of that Action Plan – including testing – duly carried out. The bespoke Action Plan is finally implemented next July, August and September.
If you would like to know more about the Travel Advice for Business Programme take a look at the London 2012 website or send an e-mail to: [email protected]
London 2012: The Security Challenge
The final presenter of the morning was Andy Clancy, principal security consultant and director at ISR (UK).
Once again, this discourse kicked off with several facts and figures pertaining to the 2012 Games. There’ll be 26 Olympic sports taking place in 34 venues (and, for the Paralympic Games, 20 sports across 21 venues). There are 14,000 athletes and close on 10,000 team officials involved from 200 countries. Whether it’s ‘the greatest show on Earth’ or not, it’s certainly the biggest!
As well as the ‘other events’ running alongside the Olympics that have already been mentioned, there’s also the Euro 2012 football tournament – which runs from 8 June -1 July – and the Notting Hill Carnival (2-3 September). The Olympic Village itself, meanwhile, doesn’t close its doors until 16 September.
LOCOG is looking after security for both competition and non-competition venues, the ODA is taking care of the Olympic Park and any new build infrastructure, the police are involved via S023, taking care of public order and assisting in a ‘business as usual’ mentality and landscape and the Government has its say in security co-ordination courtesy of the Olympic Security Directorate.
“For businesses,” outlined Clancy, “the key issues revolve around staff, buildings, reputation and the customer base. “The potential threats are varied, including terrorism, protest action – whether known about in advance or spontaneous in nature – disruption to the transport infrastructure and issues around resilience.”
Clancy touched on the overriding need for “good communication and intelligence networks” and the successes already achieved down the years by operations like Project Griffin and Project Argus.
He then brought up a map of the aforementioned Olympic Route Network and provided some salient words of warning to businesses stationed nearby.
“There are going to be road restrictions in place during the Games. On each day, they’ll run from 6.00 am through until midnight. There’ll be a GB pound 200 fine for anyone using the Olympic Route Network when they shouldn’t be, and a fine of anything up to GB pound 10,000 for those deemed to be persistent offenders. Those who are involved with deliveries to their businesses need to be thinking about this.”
Useful websites for reference
Transport for London www.tfl.gov.uk
LOCOG www.london2012.com
London Prepared www.londonprepared.gov.uk
Olympic Security Directorate www.homeoffice.gov.uk
