The UK chapter of the US-based security management body ASIS International is in 2018 celebrating its 25th birthday, the Chapter 208 being given its charter in 1993. Here’s one of a number of looks over those years. Take the CPP (Certified Protection Professional) qualification, now held by hundreds of UK security people and in the tens of thousands worldwide. Like all things, it didn’t just happen; it had to start somewhere, and in the UK it started with Paul Barker. By the by, like other security industry bodies and like other industries, so much happened because of the time and effort volunteered.
He had been a member of what was then Chapter 44 for just over a year (having joined ASIS in 1992), when his new employer, Group 4 Securitas, encouraged him to study for his CPP. In 1993 CPPs were only examined in the United States and Canada, so a venue was selected for November in Boston, Massachusetts, and Paul set about in the summer of ‘93, studying a totally American curriculum. There were 47 recommended text books that the exam questions would be sourced from, and many had been out of print for many, many years. Group 4 Resource Library did manage over some months, to source copies of all this listed reading. There were no past papers or examples of what papers might cover.
In the 1990s the exam was taken in two halves. In the morning there was Part A question paper, covering ten core subjects with 200 questions. The delegates sat in a room, each with a pen, under the eye of several invigilators. Nothing else was allowed in the room. The topics covered were similar to those of today but the law questions were about the US. Part B was eight specialist subjects, of which the candidate chose four to be examined on, and sat for in the afternoon. Each of those subjects had 25 questions.
CPP training courses were available through ASIS in the US and ran for five days, but there was not enough funding available for Paul to attend one of those as well as the exam, and the CPP training did not align with examination dates.
So, armed with what he had managed to read and make notes on, Paul set off for Boston, MA. Paul landed early evening in Boston, and decided to make his way to the exam venue, just to be sure he could find it by 9am the next day. This was Paul’s first visit to the US. There were around 30 delegates who sat the exam, all were from the US, and by tea time all was over, and Paul headed back to the small hotel, grabbed some food and went to sleep! Sunday’s flight home was not until the early evening so Paul spent the next day touring downtown Boston.
Results were mailed to candidates after around six weeks. In early January 1994, Paul received confirmation that he had passed both parts, and was now a Certified Protection Professional (CPP). He was then the third CPP in the UK.
Group 4 were very pleased Paul had passed, and so was Michael Bowles, who was a great mentor to Paul. In the spring of 1993 Mike had become the first Chapter 208 Chairman. Encouraged by Michael, Mervyn David, and later another ASIS UK stalwart Geoff Whitfield, Paul set about trying to persuade ASIS to allow the exam to be held in London. Conscious that while several senior 208 members would have liked to sit the exam, few could afford the costs involved of going to the States. A further barrier was the lack of availability of the reading material linked to the exam, or tutoring.
Initial approaches were unsuccessful, and Mervyn had to spend a lot of time in discussions with ASIS President and CPP Board President. By late spring, ASIS agree to allow an exam to be held in London but for that exam to be managed totally by ASIS US invigilators. Geoff Whitfield offered the Glaxo conference rooms in Greenford, weest London, and a date was agreed with the CPP Board for November 1994. A date and a venue were in place. ASIS would self-fund their invigilators accommodation and travel, and all Chapter 208 had to do was get some candidates registered.
The CPP reading material was still going to be a problem, and no pre-exam training was considered. Mervyn asked Paul to become the Chapter 208 Training Officer, and Group 4 supported Paul allowing him time to develop a CPP training weekend, at Broadway their training offices in Worcestershire, and produce training material. Group 4 agreed to only charge for meals, and not the accommodation or training, with ASIS Chapter 208; and (obviously) Paul’s time was free.
Paul set about taking the notes he had made from his reading of the 47 text books in the summer of 1993, and turning the notes into subject handouts. He also developed over a 1000 multiple choice questions on those ten key subjects, and developed eight of the advanced subjects; with around 100 questions for each of those.
The first CPP training weekend in May 1994 at Broadway saw 15 ‘students’ signed up. It started Friday afternoon and finished Sunday tea-time. The students were then encouraged to self-study through the summer, and Paul used to send questions sets to them to try (by land post in those days, remember, before email) and to keep them encouraged. A final shorter CPP training weekend was scheduled for November, the weekend of the exam. More questions, more discussions, and by Saturday evening (quite late) all felt they were ready for the exam the next day. Transport was laid on by Group 4 and all travelled to Greenford and stayed in a local hotel close by Glaxo’s. Sunday morning came around and all the candidates settled into the ‘exam’ room. The US invigilators took over and managed to two-part exam over the day. After the exam, most candidates went back to the hotel for some refreshments, and those that needed it stayed over, the rest made their way back to Broadway or their homes if closer.
Results in those days took around six weeks, so by early January candidates found out mainly by phone calls and by bush telegraph that all the candidates had passed, in a 100pc pass rate. Mervyn was elated, as were the delegates, and Group 4 (which has since merged with another security contractor, Securicor, to make G4S).
So, having set a precedent, Paul set about to run the same CPP training through 1995 to 1998, which was his last year. After the first two years of requiring ASIS US invigilators, ASIS US agreed that the exam could be invigilated by the UK’s own CPPs, and stopped attending. Paul trained over 100 UK CPPs during his tenure as CPP Training Officer for Chapter 208, and all candidates passed. When Paul moved to BG Group plc, as their new Group Head of Security, his new management allowed him one year to wrap it up and find a suitable replacement. Paul transferred all his written notes and CPP handouts, and thousands of homemade multiple-choice questions and many of the text books Group 4 donated to him, to David Cresswell in 1998, who took over the mantle for CPP training for Chapter 208.
In case that was not enough work, Paul also gained a master’s degree in security management from the University of Leicester.
In 2001, Paul, for his work on CPP for the UK up to 2000, was awarded the first Mervyn David award. As an aside, the plate was in memory of Mervyn David, a former RAF Provost Marshal (the air force’s head of security) who went into corporate security, as head of security for Shell. The ceremony was the 2001 London ASIS conference dinner, and attended by Paul accompanied by his eldest daughter Katie. Paul had been invited to the dinner, and had assumed he was going to award ASIS certificates to members for their contribution to the Chapter over the year. It came as a total surprise when he was called to the stage, and presented the beautiful silver salver by Bill Wyllie, pictured left, then Head of Security at the Bank of England, and surrounded by many of his former CPP ‘students’.
Paul, pictured right, retired from Chevron, as their Regional Security Advisor Russia/Kazakhstan, at the end of 2016. He was awarded the ASIS Veteran award in 2017 by ASIS UK chairman David Clark.
