By common consent, the London 2012 Olympic Games were spectacular. From the moment the Olympic flame lit up the magnificent stadium in Stratford right through to the closing ceremony on 12 August, the eyes of the world marvelled at the stunning feats performed by athletes from all corners of the globe.
Pleasingly, Team GB enjoyed plenty of success stories, with Jessica Ennis and Mo Farrah – the latter arguably Britain’s finest ever distance runner – earning Gold medals on the track and Sir Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins (fresh from his Tour de France victory in July) similarly triumphant in the cycling events.
With unprecedented levels of interest in the Games and a huge influx of visitors to the Capital, few businesses in London would have been unaffected. All had to consider each and every safety and security implication, in turn making the necessary preparations where and when appropriate.
That preparation would have covered not only the physical security of premises, but also the safety of individuals at their places of work (and as they moved around the metropolis either for business or leisure purposes).
Unique opportunity for public-private sector co-operation
Prior to the Games starting, of course, there was much debate in the national media around the security for Games venues. Thanks to the concerted efforts of our police service, the Armed Forces and G4S, though, London 2012 was thankfully free from incident.
Interestingly, the Olympic Games offered both public and private sectors across the UK something of a unique opportunity.
An opportunity, that is, to increase engagement and communicate with each other both quickly and efficiently when it came to important safety and security messages that could have demanded the immediate attentions of as broad an audience as possible.
That opportunity was seized and, in effect, became the ‘unsung hero’ of Olympic Games 2012 safety and security. It was realised as a result of the excellent Cross-sector Safety and Security Communications (CSSC) project.
The CSSC was established with the main aim of delivering timely and authoritative security messages fed by the Metropolitan Police Service and other UK-based agencies to the business community.
Not sensitive in nature, those messages were cascaded to a range of UK industry sectors, the employees operating within (from office-based to ‘field’ and contracted staff) and, importantly, customers potentially affected by their contents.
Genuine partnership between Government, the police and business
This was – and will continue to be for the duration of the forthcoming Paralympic Games – a genuine partnership between Government, the police service and the business world and, by all accounts (and demonstrably so), has been a tremendous success.
The CSSC project built on existing (but specialist) successful and proven security networks including Project Griffin (pertaining to the security sector) and the Sister Banks (dedicated to the finance world) in providing a means for the police and Government to communicate with the wider private sector.
At the heart of it all has been the ‘CSSC Hub’ which acts as the interface between those who have information and those who need to receive it. The Hub is in permanent direct contact with, on the one hand, the police and other authorities and, on the other, the sector groups and major individual businesses involved.
Businesses large and small have been messaged with ‘one voice’ on safety and security, with feedback from companies received on those security issues most important to them and their domain.
Updates flowing from the authorities have been quickly shared with the relevant business contacts who, in turn, passed the messaging swiftly on through their own networks which, in the case of larger firms, has included nearby smaller businesses that perhaps don’t have in place what might be referred to as ‘formal’ business continuity or security functions.
Who has been involved with the Olympic CSSC project?
Business involvement in the project has included several organisations – among them the Bank of England, Barclays Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland – seconding members of their own staff to the dedicated London First project team. That project team has been operated under the expert chairmanship of former Scotland Yard assistant commissioner Sir David Veness.
Indeed, several individual firms and sectors contributed to the team’s strategy and management. Partner organisations for the CSSC initiative have included the Metropolitan Police Service, the City of London Police, the British Transport Police, the CPNI, NaCTSO, London Prepared, the New West End Company, Transport for London, the British Retail Consortium, the BSIA, Facewatch, AUCSO, the CBI, Mitchells & Butlers, the Marriott Hotels Group, London First, United Business Media, Knightsbridge Guarding and Barclays.
All of the key verticals have realised ‘touch points’ for the project. Those 20-plus sectors actively engaging have included banking and finance, construction, defence, education, energy, the food and supply chain, hotels and leisure, IT, insurance, the law, healthcare, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and, of course, security.
Creating a security legacy
One of the major themes espoused by LOCOG around London 2012 has been that of ‘legacy’. This being so, what will happen to the CSSC Hub after the London 2012 Games? Will all of this focused work cease when the Paralympic Games draw to a close? The answer is an emphatic: ‘No’.
Once the Games are over, the CSSC Hub will become an even broader virtual communications network, maintaining contact and providing advice about ongoing threats and risks. Crucially, the facility will always be there to ‘stand up’ the communications Hub when and if circumstances should demand.
And, although the CSSC project has necessarily focused specifically on London, the business representatives and associations that comprise the network are local, national and international. In truth, this superb communications model holds the potential for replication in any city.
Find out more at the Global Security Summit 2012
Those individuals and organisations who want to learn more about the CSSC project simply must attend the Global Security Summit, which runs at London’s Olympia on 10-11 October.
On Day One of this all-new, end user-focused show organised by UBM Live, Don Randall MBE – head of security at the Bank of England and one of the CSSC’s founders along with the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner Janet Williams and Home Office minister James Brokenshire – will be offering a presentation on the project’s role pre-Olympic Games, assessing the myriad benefits of virtual communications networks and affording some pointers as to how this model might be taken forward both in the UK and further afield.
Don is chairman of the Sister Banks, the City of London Crime Prevention Association and Project Griffin and a member of the City of London Crime and Disorder Reduction Panel as well as the London Resilience Business Forum.
Speaking about the CSSC, Randall stated: “The CSSC is really a continuation of the success of initiatives like Project Griffin. As a public-private sector partnership it has worked exceptionally well. We’ve been hitting 90% of the London business community with the security messaging inside 30 minutes of activation. Thankfully, we didn’t have to test the system ‘in anger’, but I’m confident it would have worked if an emergency had arisen.”
Randall added: “Really, the CSSC is everything my colleagues on the project and I wanted it to be. It’s a unique, city-wide concept that no-one else is embracing on such a scale and that, with time, has the potential to be rolled-out on a far larger basis.”
Engaging the Alarm Receiving Centres
Interestingly, in a bid to engage the CSSC with smaller businesses Randall has been talking to ADT and other organisations in the monitoring space about using Alarm Receiving Centres to cascade the messaging.
“Most businesses use alarm systems, even the smaller SMEs,” he urged, “so we can leverage ARCs to make sure even those smallest of businesses might be part of – and play a vital part in – the messaging loop.”
Adding to Don Randall’s sentiments, David Evans – 2012 project director at the BSIA – also believes the CSSC project has been a tremendous success, and for a number of reasons.
“At previous editions of the Olympic Games,” asserted Evans, “people have been impressed with the OSAC operation run by the Americans. We had to be similarly successful for London 2012. From a standing start, Sir David Veness and the team at London First energised the involvement of over 20 business sectors, and throughout the Games there was a daily conference call with security briefings provided by the Met, Transport for London and London Resilience.”
Evans went on to state: “Thanks to the CSSC project, what we now have in place on a continuing basis is a brilliant method for the authorities to communicate with the business sector and vice versa. As part of our involvement, the BSIA managed to ‘tie together’ 40 Control Rooms across the Capital so that they could be involved in the information cascade.”
Further information on the Global Security Summit
*For further information on Global Security Summit London, the full education programme and speaker line-up please visit http://www.globalsecurity-summit.com/, follow us on Twitter (@GSS_London) or join the LinkedIn Group.
**Companies interested in exhibiting should contact event manager Tracy Bebbington on tel: 0207 921 8065 or e-mail: [email protected] or Paul Amura (business development director at Pro-Activ Publications) on tel: 020 8295 8307 or e-mail: [email protected]
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