The SIA Approved Contractor Scheme: Guarding Watch ‘Special'

Buying on Approval

First Security (Guards) has been at the forefront of the regulatory process since Day One. For Jonathan Levine, the Approved Contractor Scheme's (ACS) introduction is a significant industry milestone, but it's only the beginning...The true measure of the ACS model's effectiveness will be in its use as a management system, and the associated growth in the key management discipline of organisation self-assessment. Enforcement is also paramount.

Monday 20 March 2006 was billed by the industry - or at least by those working in the security guarding sector - as a momentous date. It was the day, of course, that Security Industry Authority (SIA) licences became a legal requirement for security personnel (supplied under contract) working in security guarding, Cash-and-Valuables-in-Transit, Public Space Surveillance CCTV monitoring, key holding and close protection.

The Private Security Industry Act 2001 paved the way for the establishment of an Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS), a voluntary system of inspection and accreditation for the providers of contracted security services. The aim? To give purchasers of those services and members of the public alike the confidence that a registered security company is reputable, and has adopted proven Best Practice in all key areas of its business.

On 21 March, the Regulator published a list of the first 58 companies to achieve Approved status. Among them was my own concern, First Security. It meant that we had satisfied the relevant authorities in terms of meeting certain agreed standards, that we could register ourselves as ‘Approved' and advertise the fact to both current and potential customers.

Companies attaining ACS status are permitted to deploy a percentage of their security personnel who are not yet licensed by the SIA but who have completed their training, attained the relevant qualifications and have had their licence application accepted by the SIA for processing. In terms of percentages, to be an Approved Contractor companies had to have 50% of their officers licensed by the March deadline, and 85% of those operatives licensed before 31 March.

Officers whose applications have already been accepted and are being processed have been permitted to operate under the Terms and Conditions of a Licence Dispensation Notice. These are issued per officer, and are valid for a period of eight weeks (although each officer may be granted two licences in succession, thereby covering a 16-week period).

The ACS in the real world

What, though, does it all mean in the real world? Organisations that meet the requirements of the ACS can distinguish themselves as being among the best providers of security services in England and Wales. That is what the hyperbole will tell you, anyway, but how do we convey to the potential purchasers of security guarding services that being an Approved Contractor means so much more than just an attractive, framed certificate on the Boardroom wall?

I have said it before and I will say it again. The amount of training now required to gain a licence is still woefully inadequate. It doesn't even begin to compare with the levels of education officers receive in Scandinavia. Fundamentally, there is nothing in the ‘new' training here that reputable, professional security guarding contractors haven't already been doing (and should have been doing) for several years. In many cases, those same companies have gone much further.

In Sweden, security officers undergo in excess of 200 hours' training. By comparison, the 32 hours insisted upon for UK personnel pales into insignificance. Many of the better guarding companies provide not only the standard Basic Job Training but also additional courses (including customer care, supervisor instruction, general management courses and First Aid) as well as training bespoke to site.

The ‘good' companies have been involved and engaged in the extended security family initiatives like Project Griffin (‘From Guards to Guardians', SMT, May 2005, pp40-42), whereupon contractors share information, knowledge and Best Practice with end users to make London a safer city.

Accreditation as an Approved Contractor doesn't make the best companies instantly better, but what it does do is provide tangible evidence of expertise. An Approved Contractor is audited, not just in relation to the direct service it provides but also on the organisation's total performance measured against nine well-defined criteria.

In truth, the ACS model works on the premise that excellent people, customers and social responsibility are achieved through "fit and proper" leadership that drives strategy delivered through people, commercial relationships, resources and processes.

Organisation self-assessment

The true measure of the ACS model's effectiveness is in its use as a management system, and the associated growth in the key management discipline of organisation self-assessment. The ACS Self-Assessment Workbook is a practical tool aimed at helping companies to do this by measuring where they are on the path towards ‘security provider excellence'. It allows them to identify and understand the gaps in their service offering, and then offer tangible solutions.

The real beauty of the ACS standard is the fact that it's applicable to all security companies irrespective of size and structure.

The scale of the task involved in becoming an Approved Contractor cannot be overestimated. Putting the investment in place early on was key, as was careful planning.

We have been pitted against the best and not been found wanting. To this end, the work of the SIA and the continuous support of the British Security Industry Association is to be applauded

JONATHAN LEVINE, MD, FIRST SECURITY

As I write, there are a few big names missing from the Approved Contractor list, but perhaps this isn't entirely surprising. What is surprising, however, are the opportunities already arising for those companies that are Approved in terms of taking over security duties on site that do not have the requisite licensing in place.

Anyone working on site without a licence - or without a Licence Dispensation Notice - is now working illegally. For those who thought the day would never come, the reality is here!

Where do we go from here?

The challenge, of course, is: ‘What next?' The ACS provides all of those involved with the impetus to improve still further. Recruitment, training and the retention of quality officers is imperative. Investment in areas such as Human Resources - and top class management support - will become even more important in the months ahead.

Above all else, perhaps, what the ACS has done is afford credibility to those professionals working in our industry. An Approved Contractor is independently audited, measured and benchmarked against the very best.

Personally speaking, the ACS has done wonders for staff morale at First Security. We have been pitted against the best and not been found wanting. To this end, the work of the SIA and the continuous support of the British Security Industry Association is to be applauded. However, for the scheme to have real meaning, enforcement is essential.

Licensing and the ACS must be seen as but the first steps in a very long climb that will eventually take our industry to the very pinnacle of excellence. Jonathan Levine is managing director of First Security (Guards) (www.first-security.co.uk )

Making the Grade

Tim Whitfield provides a cogent overview of what licensing and the ACS has entailed for the typical SME contractor. There is no excuse, he feels, for contractors not to have complied with the SIA's wishes in time for the 20 March deadline, while those who continue to ignore the Law of the Land should be subject to prosecution at the earliest possible opportunity.

Just four days proir to the 20 March deadline, my company sponsored the annual London Chamber of Commerce Security Dinner. At the event, held on Thursday 16 March, our managing director Paul Cassie proudly announced that the ISS Security Group had achieved the necessary benchmarks for licensing of our security officers, and stressed that we were eagerly anticipating the publication of our name on the list of Approved Contractors soon to be announced by the Security Industry Authority (SIA).

As part of the management team of this small-to-medium-sized guarding company, I can tell you that each and every one of us has lived and breathed licensing these past six months. Our resources are not such that we could delegate the task to a faceless Human Resources Department. We have all been involved, but still the ‘whirlwind' of extra administration and investment has threatened to overwhelm our Support Services team.

We have taken the view that licensing is a key part of our business going forward, and that our security staff are our biggest asset. That being the case, we have paid - in full - for their applications and have shouldered the administrative burden.

That involved persuading, cajoling, reminding and, in some cases, bullying them to provide us with the necessary documentation in good time! It hasn't been easy, but then nothing in life that's worthwhile ever is.

No excuse for failure

We were under no illusions that the industry would follow our example. We knew that there would be a hue and cry over late applications, rejected forms, calls for delays in implementation, pleas of ignorance, cock-ups of assorted varieties and magnitudes and squeals of pain as the regulatory process finally began to bite.

However, given that this process has been heralded since 2001, we really couldn't see how the contracting side of the industry would have much of an excuse for failure.

Earlier on in the evening at the London Chamber of Commerce gathering, the managing director of a competitor company to ours - which has also achieved ACS accreditation - and a ‘grandee' of the industry, let us know his thoughts on licensing.

The SIA must turn its attentions to enforcement immediately or the efforts of responsible contractors will have been for nothing

In his speech, he explored the positives, including the legitimisation of a previously unregulated industry, the benefits to customers in terms of quality and reliability and career opportunities for operatives.

Among the negatives, he referred to the "criminalisation" of tens of thousands of security officers, laying the blame for this unwelcome state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of the SIA.

It's a nonsense, of course. Whatever happened to individual responsibility? Long-serving security officers really have no excuse for not knowing what was about to happen to the status of their chosen career. Similarly, employers recruiting officers who are new to the industry have long known that new qualifications and licensing were looming large on the horizon.

Their responsibilities to those employees could hardly have been any clearer.

The SIA is merely the enabler for the legislation. It is simply untenable to somehow claim that the Regulator is solely responsible for an individual company's failure to meet the terms of that legislation. If private sector security officers are working illegally then the fault lies with themselves and their employer.

Should they be prosecuted? Absolutely. If that is not going to happen, what was the purpose of the legislation in the first place?

If we have one complaint, it concerns the money involved. In an industry where margins are already notoriously slender, finding the estimated £600 for each licence has been a most unwelcome drain on our resources and, it could be argued, has acted as a significant deterrent for those struggling to make the commitment to regulation and the ACS. From our point of view, the cost meant that we delayed the start of the application process until the last moment. If a licence lasts for three years, we needed to accrue the maximum possible benefit from the investment.

Evidently, other contractors have thought and acted along the same lines. The SIA has been rather naïve in imagining that the industry would collectively stagger its applications six months ahead of the 20 March implementation date. After all, the ability to collectively achieve anything has hardly been a hallmark of the contract side of the business. The deluge of last-minute applications, then, cannot have been a total surprise.

ACS: a red herring?

To be frank, the late announcement of the fine points to do with the ACS didn't help. If truth be told it didn't hinder matters much, either, given that the final published Terms and Conditions reflected accurately the draft template to which we were all working. Nonetheless, it was the cue for howls of derision and cries of anguish.

We'd all do well to recognise the fact that the ACS is something of a red herring in the whole of the licensing argument. Yes, in effect it is a compulsory scheme and, yes, it represents a further expense above and beyond that for individual officer licensing. It's also a good thing to have at least one component of the licensing issue extended to the employer. Good for staff, good for the employer and good for the customer. At long last there is now a genuine ‘yardstick of competence' to help clients discern good suppliers from bad.

However, the ACS in no way obviates the need for contractors to aim at 100% licensing. That isn't the point. What it does do is give the contractor room to grow and the opportunity to recruit fresh blood to the industry under the Licence Dispensation Notice. The suspicion lingers, however, that too many companies have seen the ACS as an excuse to drop their licensing targets from 100% down to 85% and thus ease the financial and administrative burden. To my mind, such behaviour smacks of lazy thinking and lazy management.

I rather think that those qualified companies who blame the SIA for the current state of affairs are merely letting off a little steam. That's understandable up to a point, but we shouldn't let it distract us from the real focus of regulation. We must make licensing work. Too many have invested too much energy and time for it to be otherwise. The SIA must turn its attentions to enforcement immediately or the efforts of responsible contractors will have been for nothing.

Accredited Persons initiative

One afterthought... If licensing does indeed have the effect of forcing the disqualified and the disinterested from our industry then, logically, we shall be left with a cadre of more committed, higher calibre personnel. With this in mind, we are now turning our management attentions to planning training and meaningful careers for those individuals.

We are interested in the Accredited Persons initiative, which will have the effect of pushing the professional role of the security officer at the edges of private citizenry - at the same time as the much-vaunted extended police family pushes in the opposite direction.

Tim Whitfield is group sales and marketing director at the ISS (International Security and Surveillance) Group (www.issukoffice.com)