Safety and security consultancy

One person accountable for all of it.

Complex projects and events need safety and security handled together, by one person who can hold the whole picture and answer for it. I take that role, bring specialists in where a discipline needs them, and stay accountable for the result.

01 / What I see

Where multi-party projects come apart.

What I have seen on complex projects and events. My own view, not research. Every supplier can be competent and the project still arrives in this state.

Every supplier owns a piece and none owns the join

Three suppliers each deliver their part properly. The spaces between those parts belong to no contract, and that is where the problem almost always turns up.

Safety and security are held in separate rooms

A decision that makes sense in one creates a problem in the other. A door propped for evacuation that defeats the access control. A lockdown that puts people where you would rather they were not. The two have to be thought through together.

The client ends up doing the integration

You appointed specialists and became the project manager of them, chasing the interfaces yourself. That is the job you were trying to hand over.

You cannot get a straight answer on where things stand

Handover is a pile of documents from several organisations. Ask what is in place, what is still open and who owns each part, and no single document answers you.

02 / How it works

I hold the whole thing.

The point of this arrangement is that you deal with one person, and that person owns the joins between the disciplines and does not hand them back to you.

One point of accountability

One conversation, one person who knows the whole picture, and one place the questions go. The joins between the disciplines are mine to manage.

A single scope covering the safety and security picture together

Your own team dealing with one person rather than several

Decisions thought through across both disciplines before either is settled

Specialists brought in where they are needed

Where a piece of work calls for a discipline I do not hold, I bring in a specialist who does. I remain accountable for how their work fits the rest of it.

A trusted network built up over years of this work

Told plainly where my own competence ends

Their work checked against everything else before it is accepted

Everything under one scope

Governance, management systems, quality, continuity, security and day-to-day compliance are separate services on this site. On a project like this they come as one job.

One risk picture rather than several that disagree

One set of arrangements the operation can actually run

Work sequenced so each part lands when the project needs it

One clear answer at the end

One document saying where things stand when the work finishes, written so a board, a client or an incoming operator can read it as it is.

What is in place, and what evidences it

What remains open, with an owner and a date against each item

Who holds each part once I am gone

03 / What it draws on

What it covers, and where to read more.

Each of these can be bought on its own. On a job like this they come as one scope, sequenced against the project.

Governance and enterprise risk

Decision rights, delegated authority, the risk framework and the board reporting that goes with it. Set out on the strategic planning page.

Management systems

Where the project has to leave a certified system behind it, or satisfy a client who holds one. Set out on the ISO management systems page.

Business continuity

What happens when the site, the systems or the supply chain go against you mid-project, and the emergency arrangements for the day it does. Set out on the business continuity page.

Security governance

Who owns security, how security risk reaches the board, and the insider risk that sits behind both. Held together with the safety picture, in the same conversation.

Event safety

Planning for specialist and public events, including duties arising under Martyn's Law, and the crowd and capacity questions that come with them.

Day-to-day safety compliance

Competent person support and the routine compliance work, delivered by our health and safety division at The Safety Unit.

04 / Scale

From significant infrastructure to a single event.

The method holds at both ends. A large infrastructure programme needs the interfaces managed because there are so many of them. A single event needs it because there is no time to discover one on the day.

What changes between them is the size of the network I draw on, and how much of the work I do myself.

05 / Who it suits

Projects with several safety and security suppliers and the interfaces left to the client

Organisations with no internal function to run a programme of this kind

Events where the safety planning and the security planning need to agree with each other

Clients who want one name on the work and one person to hold to account

Programmes handing over to an operator who will want a clear statement of where things stand