Who Guards The Guards?

Jun 1, 2003 12:00 PM

Economics and other issues have forced individuals to take on more and more professional responsibilities, often outside of their area of expertise. This allows little time to research, select and closely manage contracted services such as security.

The Proactive Performance Management system from consulting company SecPro Services, Bellmawr, N.J., views security as a business process using checks and balances to define and manage expectations and to ensure compliance for the customer and supplier.

“The security process is a living, breathing thing, not a static process. Security providers must flow with constantly changing end-user needs,” says SecPro Services founder and CEO Chuck Fisher. SecPro Services' system is designed to adapt to changing demands.

The media has focused on the safety and liability risks associated with poorly trained and managed security officers. However, in many circumstances, the provider and the customer are equally to blame based on cost considerations such as limiting staff, pay rates and contract specifications.

Fisher, a 30-year veteran of law enforcement and the private security industry, developed a two-part business model stressing:

• validation of vendor capabilities to ensure quality personnel and management; and

• proactive reporting to review and revise security operations as needed.

“We focus on validation first, reviewing supplier credentials, licenses, references and performance statistics,” says Fisher, “it's validation versus assumption.” The “assumptions” are standards end-users assume are in place, but nonetheless, often fail to materialize. “Too often providers and end-users assume away quality control — providers don't mean to mislead, but there may be differences between a proposal on paper and the actual resources available at the point-of-service,” Fisher says. “Quality must be judged in context of the area where the services will be performed.”

Most end-users generally assume that a bidding provider has minimum quality control standards in place based on the RFP. The problem lies in the difference between the overall resources of providers and the actual local resources deployed on-site. SecPro Services' process examines supplier promises, evaluating resources at the point-of-service to ensure those resources are in place and working. “Before selecting a provider for our clients, we require the provider to submit releases allowing trained SecPro personnel to perform background checks on the actual employees to be deployed to the customer site,” says Fisher. “We have discovered instances where a provider deployed a guard with a prior criminal history, despite the provider's claims regarding their pre-employment screening process.” SecPro Services also requires written proof of employee training, history, and even proper uniforms. Each element eliminates deficiencies before the customer is affected.

As an intended consequence, the validation process establishes a basis for liability, further protecting end-users against the repercussions of guard misconduct. “We keep the honest guy honest,” Fisher says. SecPro Services requires suppliers to state, in writing, definitively that their employees meet required standards. If it turns out they do not, it is difficult for the supplier to escape liability on the basis of a good-faith mistake. With the validation process protecting their interests, end-users are in a better position to shift the liability burden to negligent providers.

Part two of the Proactive Performance Management process is the company's proactive reporting system. SecPro Services defines its personnel assignments by ensuring that posting instructions are placed at each site that detail operational parameters. “You'd be surprised how many sites fail to use post orders,” Fisher says. SecPro Services ensures that all parties review and sign-off on the post orders to establish the baseline for performance at each site.

The company then conducts an ongoing review at each site. “We require vendors to conduct reviews every three months, tracking personnel performance against the post orders. The vendor then meets with the end-user to review the performance reports and to review and revise post orders; everyone is aware of each parties' expectations and limits,” Fisher says.

Another aspect of the SecPro Services process is its reporting capability. By requiring daily performance reports from each site, the end-users receive electronic reports encapsulating the security presence at their site, including attendance, event summaries and incident reports. The reports are reviewed internally by a SecPro analyst familiar with the customer requirement, supplier performance standard, and contract. These reports give customers access to any report dating from the beginning of the deployment. Daily, weekly, and monthly operations reports also allow SecPro supervisors to track performance at each site — alleviating that task from its customers.

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Every month, we are offering information about managing guard services and leading in-house staff. Among other things, this page will offer an opportunity for readers to share the management lessons they have learned and to provide other helpful information to their peers in the industry.

To offer suggestions, or to contribute to this page, contact Jennifer Pero at 770-618-0135 or e-mail jpero@primediabusiness.com

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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