The 2012 Olympic Games are an ‘absolutely tremendous opportunity’ and ‘the biggest private security event in the world’, David Evans reminded an audience at IFSEC 2009.
He was speaking with Steve Kemsley, lead for liaison with the private security industry, in the Olympic Security Directorate. A senior Met Police officer, Kemsley told the IFSEC audience that he was about to be seconded to the Home Office. He began the talk with a reminder about crowd safety, besides security; and that applied not only to the Olympic venues, but in the vicinity. "It’s a huge. Huge undertaking. The Olympic Games is the largest sporting event in the world," he said. While he did not mean to be complacent, he added that the UK and London does cope with big events – most recently, the G20 summit of world political leaders. "We are good at events, but this is going to be a major challenge." He estimated that perhaps 30 per cent of the 2012 security effort will be delivered by the private security sector. He stressed that the 64-day Games were a truly national event; at least ten police forces would be involved. Villa Park in Birmingham and Cardiff Millennium Stadium are among the venues; as are, in London, the O2 Arena, ExCel, Regents Park and Lord’s cricket ground, and Wimbledon Tennis Club. The torch relay before the competition will go around the UK and will need securing. <br><br>He raised, from a government point of view, what are the risks. They are fairly obvious, if you look at cricket in Pakistan (where the Sri Lankan Test cricket team was machine-gunned on the way to a day’s play). "Sport is higher up the radar, we could not ignore counter-terrorism." There’s besides serious and organised crime, maybe against cash in transit deliveries; public disorder; and domestic extremism. "There’s always the potential that somebody is going to maximise the opportunity of the biggest show in town to publicise their cause." As for crowd management, whereas people going to football stadia usually have been before and know where they are going, that will not be the case at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. These risks have been compiled into an Olympic strategic safety and security risk assessment (OSSSRA); expect to see a publicly-available, sanitised version. He stressed that this ‘security architecture’ is linked with the government’s official Contest strategy against terrorism. <br><br>The Games requires accommodation and feeding of an extra 6000 police officers; similarly, security guards will need looking after. At least 40 heads of state will be in the stadium for the opening ceremony; that will mean a lot of armed protection officers; and yet the Olympics prides itself on being ‘the friendly games’. So the organisers do not want ‘stormtrooper policing’. While the authorities want the security in August 2012 to be as much as possible ‘business as usual’, there will be tenders. Steve Kemsley described the organisers’ relations with private security as a ‘two-way dialogue’, so that the industry knows what jobs are coming up. Here he quoted Charles Farr, director-general of the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism, which works through the Olympic Security Directorate (OSD). He stressed working with private industry so that the organisers have what is proven and reliable, well in advance, so that sites can lock down before the Games. There is – inevitably in a project of this size? – something of an alphabet soup of organisations. Steve Kemsley did explain the bodies concerned. The Olympic Delivery Authority is responsible for among other things designing in security measures at the new venues. LOCOG is the production company for the event, if you like, which will (among other things) buy in security screening and guarding. <br><br>David Evans took the platform at this point. He’s the British Security Industry Association’s man liaising on 2012; a former MD of guarding company Legion Security. He began by saying that for the first time the authorities were dealing with private security as a partner: "It’s going to have a fantastic legacy for us all." Now legacy is one of the buzz-words around the Games, meaning that 2012 is meant to leave lasting value. In security terms, legacy means things like trust between private and public security. It is already happening; David Evans spoke of RISC, the UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community (www.riscuk.org). It’s three years old, including industry associations like BSIA, Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) and Defence Manufacturers Association (DMA) an Intellect, and think-tanks RUSI and Chatham House. RISC has advisory groups on such topics as CBRN and critical national intrastructure (CNI); and the Olympics, co-chaired by David Evans. He did stress that will LOCOG will have a budget; as will the ODA; and there will be a transport budget; they will not be held centrally. So you have to work out where are the opportunities for making yourself known. At the Competefor website (www.competefor.com) you can sign up to receive tenders. This portal may be used for tendering after the Games (another ‘legacy’). In the Olympic Park there are several primary contractors with their own supply chains – the big building and engineering firms such as McAlpines, Balfour Beatty and Carillion. While the OSD will have a budget of £600m, David Evans spoke of £400m of that going on police pay and rations. The speakers did however give a flavour of how wide are the security tender opportunities. Central London railways stations will need securing; as will buses overnight. Training camps for the athletes are already being fixed; the British team will be at Aldershot for instance. The estimated 23,000 journalists covering the event will need IT systems; that IT equipment will need warehousing. The sporting Games will be accompanied by a cultural Olympiad; and we can expect to see much sprucing-up of cities. David Evans stressed it was a ‘vast opportunity’ for the security industry: from barriers to combat hostile vehicles, to asset tracking; to close protection of VIPs staying at hotels in the West End – here were recalled the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008 on prestige targets, such as hotels. <br><br>While the details of planning were not covered in the talk, it was plain that private security has indeed been invited to the eighth floor of New Scotland Yard, to the Met Commissioner’s briefing room. Questions remain: will the private security industry truly be able to deliver, on the day, trained, SIA-badged security officers in the numbers required? A member of the audience did query if the Security Industry Authority will be able to badge in good time the temporary ‘spike’ of guards required for 2012. David Evans spoke of 15000 applications [for SIA licences] just for the Games; and added: "I have been assured [by the SIA] that that is well within their capacity to deal with." <br><br>However sceptics remain: will the supply of badgeable people meet demand, given that students and other labour pools will be dredged by everyone from meeters and greeters to fast-food concessions (as was the experience of Manchester in the 2002 Commonwealth Games)?! Will some guarding contractors judge that they would rather look after the clients that they already have and will still rely on, after the Games have passed? As Professional Security reported from a Reliance Security seminar for clients last year, that is Reliance’s view; it would not look for Olympic business, in case existing clients’ coverage suffered.
