Pictured is Frank Cannon while he spent two days at London Olympia in Kensington earlier this month, attending London Build Expo, mixing with the great and good of UK construction. We featured him in summer 2018, and in the September to November print editions of Professional Security Magazine. He writes:
My aim, as a Certified Protection Professional (CPP), was to gauge the profile of the security profession within the construction industry and then to advocate the need for them to better protect their people, property, information, and their organisation’s reputation against the ever-present adversarial risk.
Why? It’s clear to those that analyse the UK construction industry that it is vulnerable to attack by those acting with a malicious intent. In a 2020 article, Allianz Cornhill revealed that plant theft alone costs the construction industry £800m a year and that nearly £17.5m of tools were stolen across London during 2020. Surely this is not sustainable, and I wanted to see if I can help reduce the opportunity for those who steal or damage construction equipment, materials, or plant machinery during the delivery phase when we build our critical infrastructure, commercial properties, or our family homes.
So, what did I find?
The first thing I should acknowledge is that my visit to the Expo was a pleasant and enjoyable experience; the organisers, their service staff, and the exhibitors worked hard to provide a knowledge sharing and learning environment beneficial to all. The workshops, networking opportunities, and social space allowed me to meet new people, understand the world through their perspective, and help me adapt my thoughts on how best I could achieve my aim of creating a behavioural-based security culture within the UK construction family.
I saw three trade stands promoting the need for robust information management in the cyber world and across project offices; I saw a niche product supplier for automatic access control systems and video intercoms; I saw a manufacturer offering an array of certified security doors; and I was really pleased to see my security industry colleagues from Secured By Design (SBD) as they promote the merits of the official police security initiative that works to improve the security of buildings and their immediate surroundings to provide safe places to live, work, shop and play. There was also an exhibitor demonstrating the sustainability credentials of a portable solar-powered CCTV camera platform that can be deployed to help detect people that walk through their field or view.
I then set about seeking out construction skills training providers, their accrediting bodies, and those industry bodies that promote safe systems of work, cultural diversity, or inclusion. I also wanted to chat to those highlighting the challenges associated with mental well-being, the organisations that insure the construction activities, and those that promote inter-operability by removing silos, encouraging collaborative working, and by making engineering information available to all throughout the design and delivery phases of a build.
Everyone I spoke to was extremely pleasant and engaging, each conversation increased my understanding of why the industry remains vulnerable. When speaking to the construction skills training providers or their accrediting bodies, both offered their support for me to create and certify a bespoke security course to be made available to the construction industry. This is, of course, not the solution I was advocating. The reason this course does not already exist is because there isn’t a market for it. Which construction company is going to send their operatives, engineers, managers, or senior executives on a construction-focussed security course? I believe that if they want security, they’ll sub-contract in a security service provider.
I countered their proposal with one of my own and that was to include secure behaviours into every construct skills or management course across their training syllabus or educational portfolio. I don’t want them to train security officers or educate security managers, I want them to integrate secure behaviours, and change the accountability mindset so that ‘everyone’ accepts their responsibility in safeguarding their people, property, and intellectual property – aka proprietary information. I want security to become part of their industry DNA, to place the need to protect property from adversarial risk alongside the need to keep people safe when performing hazardous work, to avoid damaging the environment, to strive for quality delivery at the first time of asking, and to maintain productivity rates that help maintain the delivery schedule. When defining the organisation’s culture, I want protective security and active resilience to have a seat at the table. I want protective security to feature on the agenda for all project leadership meetings and periodic reviews and for all projects to appoint an executive-level leader to be accountable for mitigating adversarial risk.
When I spoke to the enthusiastic and caring people on the mental well-being stand, I highlighted the synergies between the ‘triggers’ that they see when workers suffer from poor mental health with those ‘red flags’ that might also indicate a cry for help across the personnel security after-care programme. Someone who has financial challenges, or resorts to drink or drugs to mask their depression, or someone who acts out of character because they are overwhelmed with grief, anxiety, or a reduced sense of self-worth, may choose to steal project property to sell to others to get cash or help the local organised crime gangs to obtain access to areas or information that they are not authorised to have. The adversary often preys on vulnerable people when they are at their lowest and this frequently coincides with the time that they come to the attention of the Mental Health Buddies or Champions.
Whilst this ‘obvious’ synergy is known to some, it was apparent that the opportunity to collaborate and help those vulnerable workers avoid losing their jobs — at the worst time possible— through unwittingly breaching their employer’s code of conduct, or even breaking the law, was not commonplace across the industry. I left this stand with a smile on my face, safe in the knowledge that UK construction does care for their people.
My next conversation was with an insurance broker with an aim to establish if they set prerequisites or expectations for their customers to take protective measures to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime and thus reduce the subsequent need to claim against their policy. Whilst waiting my turn to speak to the broker, I scanned their literature and inspected their advertising boards displayed on their stand.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed — but not entirely surprised — to note that the words protect, secure, or safeguard did not feature. Granted, I didn’t read the small print and nor was I able to read all the brochures available from the numerous insurers, but my fears were confirmed when I spoke to the salesperson. The answer was ‘no’, ‘don’t really know’, ‘maybe we should’ when I asked why the policies were not being sold by advertising the need for self-help to reduce the impact of crime, or that the agreement included an expectation that the customer must take basic steps to reduce the likelihood of them being a victim of crime. I’m sure the insurance providers themselves would discuss this aspect with their customer when arranging their cover but, I think, by including this requirement in their advertising literature, this could help send a message out to the industry – especially during these economically challenging times.
Now that I recognised the absence of words like ‘protect’ and ‘security’ from the trade stand advertising boards, I embarked on another circuit of the hall to seek them out; success, I found them. Numerous stands were advertising their hardware and alarm systems to ‘protect’ against fire or water damage, and more than one project finance company boasted about their ability to ‘secure’ finance to help large infrastructure projects but, I only found one stand advocating that their ‘secure storage systems’ could help ‘protect’ their customer’s property.
Bingo, let’s go and have a chat.
Again, there was a need to wait my turn, so I scanned their very impressive glossy brochure and inspect their display of mesh lockers and metal storage cages that were indeed solid, robust, and appeared to be vandal resistant – although I am not an engineer or qualified to attest to the protective qualities simply by looking at them on a trade stand. Again, those on the stand were extremely welcoming and justifiably proud of what they were showcasing. Having introduced myself and provided a brief outline as to why I was attending the show, I enquired about the protective qualities of their products and sought clarity around their security industry certification. Their product did have a quality certification from a Scandinavian accreditation body but nothing to demonstrate that the level of security rigour had been tested in controlled environment. Arguably therefore, they shouldn’t be advertising the ability to protect their customer’s property when the product does not have a security certification.
As it happened, the Managing Director of the company was on the stand, and we had a lovely chat for a good half an hour during which I agreed to meet up with him away from the show to introduce him to the Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) Red Book, which is a reference for specifiers, regulators, designers, and end users of fire and security products and services. I suggested that if he were to seek inclusion in this book, he would enjoy market access to government departments and those projects that receive government funding. Again, this was a mutually beneficial conversation and something that made my travel and accommodation costs worthwhile alone. Me raising the awareness of one supplier for the need to obtain and market a security ‘kite mark’ would help raise the profile of the security industry within the construction industry. This made me feel good even though, as a security consultant, I knew I wasn’t being paid to attend this trade show but, sometime, you need to seek reward from non-monetary angles. The most pleasing aspect of this engagement was the MD’s attitude and his willingness to listen, challenge my thinking, and share his perspective of the construction industry.
So, what do I do next? As a Fellow of the Security Institute and a Chartered Security Professional (CSyP), I will continue to engage those that I have met at the London Build Expo 2022 to advocate the need for a cultural change across the UK construction industry. I will seek out opportunities to further develop my understanding of what the builders need to succeed, and I will advocate behavioural-based security whenever I can.
At this year’s exhibition, I visited the Sustainability stage, took the open mic on the BIM & Digital Construction stage, listened to some impressive speakers on the Fire Safety stage, and enjoyed the colourful and dynamic minds assembled on the Diversity & Inclusion stage but this got me thinking. Why should there not be a Protective Security and Active Resilience stage — maybe sponsored by the Security Institute — at the 2023 London Build Expo, so those in the cyber security and protective security profession can facilitate a rich and meaningful conversation around the need to protect our UK based construction sites and large infrastructure projects from the scourge that is crime. Let’s not give them the opportunity to disrupt our build programme and let’s reduce that £800m loss every year.
About Frank Cannon, BSc (Hons), CSyP, CPP, FSyI
Until recently, Frank Cannon was the head of security at the Hinkley Point C (HPC) new nuclear build construction site in Somerset where he led a team protecting the biggest construction site in Europe. Using his experiences at HPC and combining them with his ten years in Kazakhstan building two mega-oil and gas plants and his 24 years of service as a Royal Military Police officer, Frank has created a behavioural-based security programme specifically for the construction industry. Through his consultancy, Cannon Asset Protection Limited, Frank advocates that you protect your constructions sites The CAP Way. Visit https://thecapway.com/.
About London Build Expo: it runs next at London Olympia on November 15 and 16, 2023. Visit https://www.londonbuildexpo.com/.
