A gathering around the table of a head of security, trainer, regulator and (not least!) training funder turned out to be an upbeat discussion of attainment so far and further skilling of staff to come. Mark Rowe sat in.
A gathering around the table of a head of security, trainer, regulator and (not least!) training funder turned out to be an upbeat discussion of attainment so far and further skilling of staff to come. Mark Rowe sat in.
Having shaken hands inside, the hosts and visitors went outside the British Museum and into a side building. Outside were hundreds of mainly young people – some of the more than five million a year visitors. Easily 20,000 people a day can pass through. Inside were Mike Barnett, the museum’s head of security and risk management; his deputy, Karen Turner; from the trainers, Brian Hilton, MD of RST, and Tony Clark, training and development manager; Security Industry Authority chief executive Bill Butler, based (relatively speaking) around the corner at Holborn; Dr David Hutchinson, the Sheffield-based lead officer for security exam qualifications at awarding body NOCN; and from Lambeth College in south London, Kevin Faulkner, security training project manager, and Peter Doble, vice-principal finance and planning. And Professional Security. The reason we were all there: the vocational training – NOCN’S Security Practitioner qualification – taken by museum in-house guards.
Mike Barnett began by thanking everybody around the table for their part. Praising the training, he said: “I can’t tell you what a lift it has been to the people working here. It’s been a win-win situation for us.” Brian – whose corporate background was with the Mars Group (‘I used to flog Mars bars and Milky Ways’) – began by harking back to the night-watchman days of old men with no teeth in a shed. And the security industry grew, employing more, as more people had security – or rather, as Brian added, did not, because despite for their money buyers got guards with no skills, no training, and often working shifts of up to 24 hours. “This was not the fault of the individual; this was the fault of the system, of everybody.” And by lacking skills security people were in danger – of workplace assault.
Brian described the SIA as ‘a marker for change and skill development. It gives everybody a win-win situation. For the individual, to have a better job. To be better paid, to have more skill, to have less threat; and for the organisation, to actually provide a far wider range of services.’ Brian, too, spoke of how each component – the museum, college, and regulator – make things work. He stressed Lambeth: "Among the colleges, the commercial department of Lambeth College is the largest supporter and funding body to the security industry in the UK today. This includes the delivery of Level 2 CCTV (PSS) courses and Level 2 Door Supervision. Lambeth are also funding a number of Level 3 Close Protection places as well as underwriting the entire vocational qualification ‘Security Practitioner’ under Train to Gain, completed by the British Museum." By contrast, he spoke of organisations – or their consultants – negative towards training, ‘negatives that we have to break down for people to come on board the skills wagon; because we all have to learn and develop’.
Mike Barnett, with after the SIA chief exec facing him, took the chance to give his opinion of the regulator. “You do have your critics, but from my point of view I am a supporter of the SIA; it’s the first opportunity to get some recognition and licensing of the industry. I wish you good luck where you are going. As Brian said, it’s the start, and that’s how anyone in the [security] profession views it. I am sorry we didn’t get the follow-through, where the licensing wasn’t applicable to in-house; if we had had that support from government it would have been a lot better than it has been.” Hence, as Mike added, the training by RST, to put the museum’s in-house security team on a par with external guarding.
Bill Butler said: “I think the SIA has had a difficult period, but when you look at what they had to contend with, it isn’t surprising. I am very fortunate I have arrived to a factory that works, scaryingly well.’ He quoted the 600,000 security qualifications held by people (which, as he added, is not the same as 600,000 people with security qualifications, as some people have more than one certificate). Many of those are gained by people who did not have any earlier qualifications. “It annoys me when people try to demean the training, because it is a real achievement.”
Mike Barnett spoke of how the (voluntary) training was ‘sold’ to the officers. “The selling point was – by doing this, it puts your career very much in your hands.” He elaborated: when the SIA regime came in, guarding companies funded the training for their staff – ‘they had to. Now they have their staff trained, so anybody who wants to join them has to do it [pay for the training] themselves. Selling it to the guys didn’t prove that difficult, actually.” Bill Butler added: one of the things talked about at the SIA, keeping criminality out of the security industry – and that’s part of the regulator’s role. “Once you have done that it’s about working with the people working legitimately in the security industry; it’s about supporting skills. I find it very refreshing,” Bill told Mike, “that you have made that step. I think it’s a no-brainer.”
Mike raised something easily overlooked by trainers and colleges used to students in class all day; the need for flexibility. Mike said: “We have difficulty in releasing people, especially because we are going through a change management programme; if it hadn’t been for Brian’s team being flexible, being here when we needed them, and not having to release great blocks of people.” Bill Butler raised a related point, about the proposed requirement for extra training – notably in physical intervention – for all door staff, even those renewing their licence. “I think in principle it’s the right thing to do, but one of the things we have been talking about; you are in a very different world when you are in a job, finding ways of getting training to people is really difficult; it’s a key cost to the business, far more expensive than the [SIA] licence.” And Mike added the end user point of view; how crucial it is for the trainer to get a feel for the trainees’ workplace, rather than delivering the training in a classroom.
While photos were taken, I asked about Mike’s job title – as head of security and risk management. A former policeman, he worked and lived in Bahrain for seven years, and as a corporate security man for the French oil firm Elf, and for the Transport for London museum, and securing a diamonds exhibition at the Natural History Museum. The British Museum asked him to come for six months; and that was more than two years ago. He spoke of a natural synergy between risk and security: “I am a big advocate of integrated risk management; and it’s cost-efficient too … security are the first people to see a health and safety incident, and a fire.” Like other people at prime sites, he speaks of it as a privilege – and indeed good fortune at working for three major museums in London: “It doesn’t get any better than this.” There are any number of objects (the museum has a million, after all) that someone finds controversial. The Elgin marbles from Greece, notably. I raised with Mike Barnett a point made to me by Gerry McCartney several years ago while he was at the Imperial War Museum; that big exhibits like a V1 rocket are too big to steal – you can’t slip them in your pocket! Nor the Parthenon marbles. That said, the museum as custodian – and here risk management comes in – seeks to secure the exhibits from damage, malicious or unintended. You may have to put a painting or sculpture behind glass and with a tripwire to put distance between visitor and object, to deter not only theft and vandalism but damage from untold numbers of people touching and stroking canvas or stone, and gradually doing harm. There can be conflict between museum specialists – who may seek to avoid barriers between exhibits and people – and the security person, whose job is to prevent a hole in a Michaelangelo, whether the offender is a child poking their finger or a miscreant with a knife.
But to return to the British Museum, its ticket-only, highly successful temporary exhibitions almost have an element of British cultural diplomacy about them. Certainly VIPs regularly come to the museum. That takes planning; even more so do the exhibitions. While he wouldn’t be drawn on the subject, Mike did say he was among those working on the 2012 exhibition, at Olympics time. To arrange loans of objects, transport from around the world, and how to display them takes those couple of years. And to return to the start, the uniformed in-house security officers: they have to respond promptly and pleasantly to the varied queries by visitors from 101 countries; and the answers have to be right!
