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Security Designers – Who are they?
Using an accredited security design consultant to mitigate your architectural risks.
Design Security Ltd have on many occasions been requested by knowledgeable architectural teams to support and make sense of security. Now you would think that only large infrastructure projects require the design of security controls. All projects have something that requires securing but typically this is not expressed clearly in the Employers Requirements (ERs).
Design Security find that architectural teams that just assume security is a bit of CCTV and putting in an alarm tend to stall and then carry the risk that they cannot effectively demonstrate to a client how security operates and supports the business by reducing risk.
Architectural teams understand that security design is a discipline in its own right understand that using Design Security Ltd reduces their commercial and reputational risk.
Security Design creates three challenges for design teams but in most cases, they don’t know it. These challenges are:
- Determining requirements – (is the client brief clear)
- Knowing the technology – (security is more than just putting in a camera or type of door)
- Understanding implications – (how will the security layer for the site change the current vision?)
The Design Security Ltd team have experience over many types of projects to reduce the risks to their clients and inform them on how security can be applied in a cost-effective manner.
To illustrate that early engagement with Design Security Ltd can save your architectural firm both in terms of commercial risk and reputation loss are provided in the following example.
A stadium project was being undertaken and the previous security consultants had been removed from the project. Design Security Ltd were provided with a RIBA Stage 3 report and asked to take this forward to RIBA Stage 4. On reviewing the ‘security’ report it was evident that the previous consultants had not engaged, or if they had had not recorded fundamental facts on how the stadium would operate through the risk cycle.
The consequence of this was far reaching but one element would cause a significant risk to the project both in terms of financial and reputational risk and potentially extensive losses. The previous security consultants had specified ballistic glazing in the report. Design Security Ltd enquired with the architects if they understood the design implications both in terms of structural hardening and operation of the area. The size of the glazing was explained, and the architectural team realised that they would need to resize everything at the level of the glazing and all the floors beneath to accommodate the load, this would mean weeks of redrawing and calculating loads something the architects did not have and something the end client were not going to pay for.
The Design Security Ltd solution was to go back to the client’s team and challenge the assumptions and conclusions made about the risk and demonstrate that a correctly layered approach mitigated the need for such glazing at that location.
The result was an agreement from the client’s team to reduce the risk, this in turn removed the need for ballistic glazing. The architects were able to maintain their original design and meet their deadlines without having to undertake an expensive reengineering piece of work and be subjected to late delivery penalties.
Design Security Ltd are experienced in helping clients to understand and interpret how ‘security’ can be applied to buildings and spaces across a range of sectors. What we are not is a simple tick box security company just following the secured through box ticking approach that unfortunately is so often seen in today’s built environment.
Design Security Ltd are an independent risk management and security leadership consultancy at the forefront of design for the built environment.
If you or the organisation that your work for would like to discuss how to effectively apply physical, technical & operational security measures, please contact Design Security Ltd, Wales’s only Independent Security Design Consultancy at enquires@designsecurityltd.com
T: +44 (0) 1873 855113
M: +44 (0) 7742 110291