A mention of him at the Security Institute conference in the summer was enough of an excuse to visit consultant and trainer David Rubens. London was the venue, and a topic of conversation. Mark Rowe writes.
David Rubens โ aikido teacher, close protection trainer, international security consultant, to name three sides of the man โ was mentioned by Andy Williams, EMEA head of security at Nomura, and host of the Security Institute conference, at the event. Andy Williams described how his bank coped with the Japanese tsunami and earthquake and the accompanying nuclear power station accident. Briefly, the natural disaster affected Nomuraโs buildings and work in Japan, and required the business like any other to locate its travelling and missing staff. You can read Davidโs report about the event and indeed many others on his website. What struck me in the document was that David showed Japanโs โsystemic failuresโ. Not only could the authorities have known such a disaster could happen, their planners identified that the disaster would, some time, happen. โThe first thing that must be said, whatever the scale of human and national tragedy that was suffered as a result of the earthquake and tsunami, is that none of the problems faced by Japan as a consequence of the events of March 11, 2011 should have been unforeseen, and it was exactly these scenarios that national, regional and local crisis managers should have been planning for. Japan is the most earthquake-prone zone in the world.โ <br><br>I wanted to ask David what the equivalent was for Britain โ the crises that will come, and after the event we will be wise. A Mumbai-style terror attack on a city? A collapse of IT and communications โ not even because of malice, but if someone pulls or cuts the wrong cables?! David suggested IT; a running-out of fuel or rather a drying-up of the supply; and โ a sort of IT failure โ cashpoint machines stopping or running out of cash (which might happen as a result of a shortage of fuel?). David began by speaking of โleft of bangโ and โright of bangโ. In other words, you can do planning before an event, but afterwards, there is the event, which might not be the one you anticipated, or on a scale you imagined. To quote twice from Davidโs Japan report: โThe root cause of the failure to respond effectively to what are well-modelled and highly predictable disaster is the inability of crisis managers (whether local or national) to face up to what are the true nature of the threats that they are facing, and instead to restrict their pre-event response management planning to what they can comfortably deliver, rather than to what will actually be required.โ And: โHowever effective our pre-event planning may be, it is in the nature of any โpost-bangโ scenario that our immediate response will take place within chaos, confusion, and fast-changing scenarios hampered by lack of real-time information. Any first-response should be built around the need to gather information, assess needs and utilise resources to deliver first-response.โ <br><br>In conversation, David put it this way; plans have no value โ planning is indispensable. There is a difference, that is, between plans and planning. The world does not give you the problems that are in your plans. By planning, you see what your โresponse management capabilityโ is. And that is not merely what control rooms or radios, desks or back-up generators you have, but what the capabilities of other partners and agencies are. Are the decision-makers comfortable working with each other; do they know each other well enough so that, say, one manager can say to another that he needs a cordon to move 200m north; or he needs somewhere to park his vehicles, or a corridor to drive them along. I interrupted; itโs got to be done on trust? Itโs all done, David went on, on the need to get the job done. Thereโs also the need for agencies to understand what others do. โAnd although that sounds obvious, one of the things that comes up in a situation is that each agency tries to work out what they need to do on an agency basis, rather than what needs to be done to deal with this problem.โ If you think, in other words, in terms of what service you are going to deliver, that may not be the same thing as: what needs to be done to sort out this problem? <br><br>From the police we are familiar with the bronze-silver-gold level of managing an incident. David spoke also of a โsuper-goldโ, a platinum level, for strategic management. Bear in mind that so many messages may be coming into a control room โ merely to say that someone is where he is supposed to be, as a check call โ and as in the military, thereโs more than one agency involved. David stressed that usually each agency does a genuinely excellent job: โBut that is not what is being questioned in crisis management. Itโs the way you co-ordinate, at times of great pressure, when you have less than perfect conditions. You have no intelligence and information and you are basically creating a response, on an on-going basis, in response to more information you get coming in. So if you SOPs [standard operating procedures] work, then it isnโt a crisis, because basically itโs just incident management; and you have planned for that.โ But what when it gets interesting โ what if you have a SOP for repairing a broken traffic light in London, which will cause disturbance within an area of London. But what if every traffic light in London stuck at green?! Within 30 seconds, every SOP no longer applies. In other words, an SOP will assume something โ so what happens if the SOP is no longer true? What if every ATM stopped working, and you had to survive on the money in your wallet? David makes the point that whereas some parts of the world such as the Caribbean do have regular extremes โ such as hurricanes, or floods โ that they manage, the risk profile of the UK does not have such catastrophic events. โBut then you bring something like the Olympics in.โ <br><br>David spoke at length on โthe propensity of the Olympics to go wrongโ. โThe thing about the Olympics is, itโs incredibly complex. And the disadvantage we have in this country, itโs being mapped on to a city like London which is basically dysfunctional anyway. Delivering the Olympics [in London] is completely different from delivering it in Vancouver or Beijing, where you have wide, open boulevards and you can have traffic management systems and you can control. The truth is, we have no spare time of anything.โ Time, for example is running out. Remember the trouble around the official opening of the T5 terminal at Heathrow Airport, and access to the Millennium Dome on the evening of December 31, 1999? There the hitches could have been โ and at T5 were โ fixed in a day or two. But you cannot put back the opening of the 2012 Games if something (control room, SOPs, handbook) isnโt ready or tested, or if a problem is identified. Chaos is inevitable, something will break down and block a main road or Tube line: โThe second thing is, we have no spare space in London.โ And the third; is the lack of spare management resources, although David suggests attention is being paid to that and itโs not as unchangeable as the other two factors. However, the more complex something is, the more that organisations inter-conenct, the more inevitable it is that things will break down. One organisation will not co-ordinate with another (or not in time), there will be gaps: โIt doesnโt take a masters degree in risk and security management to tell you that is going to happen.โ And yes, David does have a masters, from Leicester. As he adds, a father trying to put on a birthday party for 20 children on a Saturday afternoon knows how many things can and do go wrong before the party-goers go home happy. We, Britain, do know how to run a complex operation, how to respond to the unexpected, and almost disastrous; although, does anyone truly know how to run the London Olympics?! โThe things that go wrong will not be completely unexpected, but completely inevitable, we can list things that are going to go wrong; so nobody can complain โoh my god, who would have thought of that?!โ. The Japanese earthquake this year, and Hurricane Katrina flooding New Orleans, were completely predictable. At this point David quotes one of his favourite and โ pardon the pun โ punchiest lines, from Mike Tyson. Briefly put, when asked about the opposing fighters, who have planned for months, Tyson answered that his opponentsโ plans would go perfectly โ until Tyson hit them. <br><br>David is invited to speak at two TINYg counter-terrorism awareness events, in New York in September and London in October. <br><br>This year is the 20th anniversary of Davidโs consultancy Meido. He recalls: โWhen I started, there was no such thing as a professional security career, it was basically some blokes doing security; ex-coppers, whatever it might be. Now you are seeing genuinely good, young guys coming through.โ Just as young professional people may want to become an accountant, or an architect, now they are choosing to become a security professional, โand I think that is really encouraging; but still so many times you see people put into senior corporate security management positions who have no background in corporate security. And I know because they come to me and invite me over for coffee.โ When I asked David to expand on that, he added that such a newcomer may have been in general management, or human resources. At this point in the conversation David went over to his bookcases and pulled down one of the ring binders from his University of Leicester masters degree to go over what is the meaning, and aims of security management; is it a profession? โNow we are clear it is a profession,โ David went on, โif done properly and there are many professional people out there.โ Just as architects understand how and why they should not build things that fall down, and engineers understand not to build things that blow up; security professionals should know how and why not to put security management systems in place that do not work.<br><br>โMy feeling is that if you put yourself forward s a security person within a corporate position or a freelance consultant you should be as good at what you do as the corporate brand person or tax adviser. Because the people in those positions will be world class; clearly defined aims and will be expected to deliver a service to the board room level, to allow that organisation to have a competitive advantage over its competitors. And yet the security people are still considered as second-rate, non-productive add-ons that are way, way down the food chain.โ David argues that the place for the head of corporate security is in the board room, as a senior vice-president of security, โbecause if itโs done properly security management makes your organisation better at whatever it does. Security should make it better. And the person offering that service should have a range and a breadth of expertise, as the international tax adviser or the international brand and marketing person does.โ Corporates would not take someone out of a computer shop to run their IT; โand yet it will often pick a bloke who has just come out of the Army and make them head of corporate security. Personally it makes no difference to me, but it hurts me from a professional perspective, because it undermines the value of the service that we offer. And if we are to lose the image we have, as a non-productive cost in major organisations and become a value-adding asset; then we have got to make sure we have a level of professional excellence that will allow us to deliver that. At the board room [level] and on a global scale in the same way as their other senior corporate advisers do.โ <br><br><br>-=-=<br><br>Some 2012 Games figures<br><br>Some 15,000 athletes from over 200 countries will compete in the Olympic and Parlaympic Games next summer; 10,000 team officials, more than 4,000 representatives and officials from the 26 Olympic and 20 Paralympic sports and over 20,000 accredited media – with a similar number of unaccredited media expected. There will be 4400 medals to give; more than 14 million meals expected to be served. <br><br>Some things that will go wrong in the Olympics โ can you think of others?!<br><br>Will the thousands of volunteers be up to their jobs โ will they go missing if it rains, or their job becomes too dull halfway through?!<br>The visitors from Olympic committees speak (letโs say) 100 languages โ will they be understood, even in multi-lingual London, so that they go where they want to?!<br>Getting people from A to B, from hotel to events โ and back to A for evening entertainments: will people be on time?! And the 4400 medals?! <br>Where do these factors leave security โ such as bag and people searches at gates?<br> <br>Travel<br><br>To take travel to the Olympics – never mind the risks inside the Olympic Park at Stratford and stadia. The authorities last month said that up to 800,000 spectators and 55,000 athletes, officials, organisers and members of the media will be travelling to and from the Olympic venues every day. In London the overall transport ambition is to reduce non-Olympics demand during the Olympics by 30 per cent, although there will need to be larger reductions at specific stations and lines. The government was reduced to appealing to businesses to London businesses to adjust their travel patterns in August 2012 – to help everybody travel around the capital smoothly. Visit www.london2012.com/traveladviceforbusiness.<br><br>What the organisers say<br><br>The newly constructed Olympic Park is a spectacular showcase for the very best in British design, engineering, creativity and security, say the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). Sebastian Coe, LOCOG chairman, has said things are โabsolutely on trackโ. Among the โpartnersโ, contractors G4S and Rapiscan Systems, who have the contracts to provide guarding and screening machines respectively, are among the 25 domestic โTier Threeโ suppliers. Visit www.london2012.com.
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