The call by UBM Live’s Brian Sims and Bobby Logue (of Infologue.com) for an independent inquiry into the whole G4S-LOCOG affair in relation to Olympic Games security is vitally important.
This move has signalled the beginning of the backlash by the UK’s security sector in response to the mob attacks led by members of the House of Commons and the Home Affairs Committee – chaired by Keith Vaz MP – on G4S in general, and on its CEO Nick Buckles in particular.
This is clearly an important step for two reasons. One, it’s a signal of the intention to take back the issue of the mismanagement of the entire development and delivery of the Olympic security project from politicians who know little about the subject (and who, in any case, measure episodes like this purely in terms of what benefit they will be to their own career). It’s not their fault, they’re politicians.
Second, because there’s the realisation that it’s vital for the future reputation of UK plc that our security sector is seen across the world as assuming responsibility for this situation and offering real-time solutions that can be delivered in the face of extremely challenging timescales and conditions.
If the efforts involved in the Olympic security project so far have been an unmitigated embarrassment in the face of claims that the 2012 Games offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to present UK excellence to a global audience, then it’s still possible the period between now and the Closing Ceremony of the Paralympic Games on 9 September offers at least some chance for redemption.
It’s one that, with correct leadership, clear vision and a genuinely unified effort should not be beyond the capabilities of a professional security sector that has consistently proven itself adaptable and resilient (and possesses world class capabilities, whatever impression may have been given over the last week or so).
If you judge a man by the challenges he accepts then there’s no reason that the UK security sector should not, if given the opportunity, be judged on how it responds to what is clearly, to use a politician’s phrase, a ‘less than optimal scenario’.
Initial conception of the contract
I was in Home Affairs Committee Room 15 when G4S’ leader Nick Buckles was being questioned on Tuesday. It was immediately clear to me that he had come to the session completely unprepared, had no game plan and was not able to answer the questions (which he must have known were coming) in any cohesive manner.
To my mind, there’s no question that G4S has screwed up the running of this contract in a major way, and there are a whole range of reasons for that which will be discussed in depth over the coming months.
Nick Buckles was in that Committee Room as the CEO of the largest security company in the UK. A company with a global market value of GB pound 4.7 billion and a significant exposure to UK Government contracts (over 50% of its UK income is generated from Government work, in fact).
Brian Sims and Bobby Logue make some serious and cogent points about the initial conception of the contract, as well as eliciting several of the hurdles in the way of successful delivery, but Nick Buckles had clearly not spent any time preparing his case, game-planning his arguments or creating a strategy that would allow him to apologise, explain and then move on to the front foot by showing real leadership and a commitment to making things right.
I have been reminded very strongly of the similar situation that Tony Hayward went through as chairman of BP during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill affair. There appear to be three areas where BP fell down there, and they’re being mirrored exactly by G4S here.
The first is Stage 1, whereupon BP and G4S gain their market position by using the fact that they’re leaders in their particular sectors, have the level of management and expertise to deliver on a highly complex operation and the corporate and operational spread to both develop and manage a nose-to-tail total package.
Stage 2 begins when things start to go wrong, and it becomes clear that actually they have not had anywhere near the correct level of corporate or operational management oversight in the run-up to the problem (which has almost certainly been giving off signals that something isn’t right before it escalates into full-blown crisis status), nor the management or operational capability to respond to – and control – the problems once they do start escalating beyond ‘normal’ status.
It then becomes clear the problems that have developed are in fact an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of the failure to manage the interaction between highly complex sub-sections of the overall procedures, combined with systemic failures of the management and oversight system at every level of the operation.
However, the third stage – and the one that I think is the point here – is that when the leaders stepped forward to protect and defend both the reputation and market value of their respective companies, they were clearly inadequate for the job.
Costs of the policing deployment
Just as Tony Hayward will be remembered for the statement: “I would like to get my life back”, so G4S will be remembered for the fact that Ian Horseman-Sewell (the chap sitting next to Nick Buckles in the Home Affairs Committee hearing) had claimed on 6 July that: “In fact, G4S could run two Olympics – in London and Sydney.”
At the Home Affairs Committee meeting, Nick Buckles volunteered the information that G4S will cover the costs of the policing deployment, but it was clear when he was asked about covering the costs of the military deployment – and then about covering the costs of the accommodation for the police and military – that these were questions he had not considered.
Although he answered ‘Yes’ to both questions, from his voice and body language it appeared that he was making it up as he went along.
A number of the Home Affairs Committee members repeatedly asked Buckles to confirm his comments, with chairman Keith Vaz reminding him that he was giving a public commitment in front of a House of Commons Select Committee.
A number of respondents to Brian and Bobby’s article on Info4Security.com have commented on the odious and aggressive nature of the questioning from the Home Affairs Committee members. They’re MPs. What did you expect? Their sole interest is whether they can get their soundbites on the evening news, particularly if there’s a video clip to go with it.
Complaining about MPs being odious in committee hearings is akin to complaining that sharks kill baby seals or that there are mosquitoes in the jungle. As my eleven year-old daughter might say: ‘Duh!’
However, from a higher-level game strategy perspective, knowing how your opponent is going to come at you gives you a serious advantage as it allows you to prepare a specific game plan to respond based on neutralising your enemy’s strengths and emphasising your own.
For whatever reason, Nick Buckles and his advisors didn’t take advantage of that, and certainly didn’t appear to have prepared for it.
Focusing on the ‘Sims-Logue Manifesto’
One of the functions that the ‘Sims-Logue Manifesto’ (which has a good ring to it, by the way) can play is to ensure the appropriateness of the language being used in this debate. It’s entirely understandable why the Government should want to keep the focus on G4S and its apparent failure to deliver as contracted, but the truth is that LOCOG and the Home Office carry equal responsibility for not becoming aware of potential problems many months before they finally emerged.
It has been the proud claim of all parties involved that this has been the largest and most complex deployment of personnel in Europe since the end of the Second World War. If that’s the case, what possible reason could anyone at LOCOG or the Home Office have for taking their eye off the ball with a: ‘Don’t worry, it’s all under control’-style message?
As stated previously, one of the main selling points that has continuously been pushed at us is that hosting the Olympic Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for UK plc to demonstrate its world-beating excellence to a global audience. At this point, fact fans among you should note that the strapline for this year’s Security Institute Annual Conference on 20 September is ‘Celebrating British Excellence’.
Given the global coverage of our Olympic security situation, it’s hard to believe that any sales director of a UK company will be able to go into a major meeting anywhere in the world for the foreseeable future and make a case that the customer will gain advantage by ‘buying British’.
The repercussions of this logistical failure will undoubtedly continue long after the Olympics are over and, just as the Government would have been at the forefront of claiming responsibility for any success, it cannot be allowed to avoid blame for associated failure.
If that’s the view from the strategic level, there’s another point on the operational level that seems to me so clear that it’s as though it’s written in letters of fire 30 feet high, but which I don’t think I have seen anyone else comment on.
Skills necessary to work in a team
What am I referring to? Even if G4S had delivered the correct amount of people as contracted, they would appear to be not fit for purpose to run such a security operation.
Besides the fact that personnel had been sourced through the G4S internal interview and training system on a mass-market, sausage-factory approach and seemingly given roles for which they had not been adequately prepared, where was the time for venue orientation?
Where was the briefing on security procedures and protocols? Who went through the Venue and Event Security Management Handbooks with them (if, in fact, they exist)?
What will happen if, God forbid, there’s the need to run a total venue evacuation?
Are the people that G4S provide at the very last minute going to have the necessary personal and professional skills – not to mention the venue-specific training – that would enable them to work in a team, take in and deliver complex information and respond to a wide range of unpredictable and possibly dangerous situations at the same time as they offer the vision of a professional and trained workforce that can take responsibility for crowd safety in a venue that will undoubtedly consist of many thousands of people who don’t speak English?
Given the scale of the training and licensing operation (and given that the likelihood/inevitability of the failure to deliver the programme as planned is something that has been openly discussed for months by people who have any idea of how the whole project was being managed), where was the Security Industry Authority in all of this?
Didn’t LOCOG (the final client) have any interest in the quality of the people that were being taken on, or the quality control measures in place to do so?
Highly complex security operation
During cross-examination by Vaz and Co, Nick Buckles constantly made the point that this was a highly complex operation. In fact, he made the point so often that Mr Vaz had to tell him: “We know that. You don’t need to keep saying it.”
The complexity of the operation is not an excuse. The whole reason that G4S is charging a management fee of GB pound 50-plus million is because the company claims to have the skills to deliver on a project of that scale and complexity.
It must have been clear from the very first morning of the very first working group that ‘communications’ and maintaining contact with people who had been through the training and licensing programme would be an issue, and that someone should be given responsibility for managing that problem from the start (as should have been the case with recruitment, training and vetting).
These are not problems. These are the reasons that G4S was taken on: to fulfil these tasks.
At the Home Affairs Committee gathering, Ian Horseman-Sewell made the point that G4S regularly supplies 7,000-9,000 people every weekend during the summer, and Brian Sims and Bobby Logue make the point that G4S has indeed successfully run the security at Wimbledon and other high profile events.
However – and that is my point – the skills and capabilities required to run those events are not transferable to run a project the size of the Olympics. It’s likely at the level of project management conceptualisation that all this went wrong, and other commentators are absolutely correct when they say that this was more akin to a military exercise than a civilian security operation.
In no way a G4S bashing exercise
This is not meant as a G4S bashing exercise. In fact, I’m largely in agreement with Brian and Bobby’s main point – that this [the Olympic security contract] was, to a large degree, an impossible mission or a poisoned chalice. Choose your preferred metaphor.
I’m also interested to find out to what extent G4S was ‘leaned on’ to take over the additional responsibilities last December once it became clear that the original ‘guesstimate’ on personnel numbers was clearly wide of the mark. My own feeling is that it was never understood exactly what it takes to develop a project such as this, one that doesn’t relate to any previous or comparable operation and for which a template doesn’t exist.
What’s clear is that the people who were tasked with that role would need to have the skills and capabilities to create a project management structure that was sophisticated, adaptable and robust enough to deal with the challenges the London Olympics would undoubtedly bring.
A structure which would ultimately be judged on its ability to deliver its core (and only) objective – namely to recruit and train the teams and then deploy 20,000 people over a defined period.
As someone who is currently writing a doctorate thesis on these subjects as part of the University of Portsmouth’s professional doctorate programme, I’m fully aware of the richness of the academic and theoretical material available around creating large-scale, multi-agency projects involving a high level of process innovation.
I have a feeling that this insight was not shared among G4S’ management.
David Rubens MSc FSyI is managing director of David Rubens Associates
- David has been involved in UK security consultancy for 20 years. He holds an MSc in Security and Risk Management from Leicester University and is a visiting lecturer and dissertation supervisor on its Security, Terrorism and Policing MSc programme
- He was a visiting lecturer on the Strategic Leadership Programme at the Security and Resilience Department, Cranfield University, UK Defence Academy from 2009-2010, duly focusing on counter-terrorism and public policy as well as the management of large-scale, multi-agency operations
- He has written specialist reports for Government agencies in Japan, Russia, Dubai, Nigeria, Liberia and the Caribbean, and is highly-regarded as a speaker on the international security circuit
- David’s currently studying on the professional doctorate programme at the University of Portsmouth’s Department of Criminology & Justice where his research is concerned with the strategic management of security operations at the extremes of organisational complexity
www.davidrubens-associates.com
*This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on www.infologue.com
Free Download: The Video Surveillance Report 2023
Discover the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving video surveillance sector by downloading the 2023 Video Surveillance Report. Over 500 responses to our survey, which come from integrators to consultants and heads of security, inform our analysis of the latest trends including AI, the state of the video surveillance market, uptake of the cloud, and the wider economic and geopolitical events impacting the sector!
Download for FREE to discover top industry insight around the latest innovations in video surveillance systems.
