Training for tomorrow: the Central Academy of Security Excellence

Initial Security has most certainly earned its position as one of the Top 5 guarding contractors in the UK. The company, headquartered in the Oldbrook district of Milton Keynes, turns over an estimated £135 million per annum and currently employs 5,500 security officers alongside 300 management and sales staff. Faced with the prospect of industry regulation, the organisation’s management team commendably took an early decision to grab the bull by the horns and set out blueprints containing a Board level commitment to rethinking the company’s business strategy.

At the heart of that commitment is the desire to promote learning and development. A desire perhaps best epitomised by the launch of an all-new training school – the Central Academy of Security Excellence (CASE) – designed much along the lines of BELINSEC, the Belgian Institute of Security established a few years ago.

“Until recently, clients were not that interested in the training of security officers – either those belonging to Initial or indeed any other service providers,” claims Mike Bluestone, former managing director of the BSB Group security consultancy and now Initial’s director of training.

“The market has tended to focus more on CCTV, and has been prepared to merely make sure that there are enough people on the ground without going much further. With Security Industry Authority (SIA) licensing in full effect, and the desire to promote a professional approach to the discipline of security stronger than at any time in the past, that state of affairs is no longer acceptable.”

Talking about a revolution

Initial is making a bold attempt to consign old ways of thinking to the past with this month’s official launch of CASE.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of the guarding concern, CASE – based at Initial’s central Oldbrook site in Milburn Avenue, and headed up by Bluestone in his capacity as the initiative’s managing director – is a revolutionary training operation the like of which has never before been offered by any other guarding company. It is specifically designed to provide a range of learning opportunities for security sector companies (and non-industry concerns) looking to invest in the education of their management teams as well as specialist training for other operatives currently under their jurisdiction.

“Although Initial is obviously an investor in the project,” adds Bluestone, “CASE is very much a separate entity. It must be for the sake of academic credibility. The smaller security companies don’t always have enough funds to employ training and career development managers. Now, they can send their operatives to be trained by us. We are more than willing to accept trainees from the other leading security companies.”

Bluestone continues: “We can train officers on the revised Basic Job Training courses such that they might qualify for a licence from the SIA. There’s also a suite of security management courses on offer wherein we can teach contract managers the basics of business management, finance and IT. Not the core of security teaching, that’s true, but these topics are nonetheless vital to the discipline in this day and age.”

The origins of CASE

Bluestone fully recognises the part played in the gestation of CASE by Initial’s European boss Alain van Lidth de Jeude. “I remember chatting with Alain back in 2004. It was clear to me even then that he harboured a desire to commit to change in line with regulation. To go the extra mile,” states Bluestone.

“It was he who convinced me that the company viewed regulation as an opportunity, not a threat. That view sat very nicely alongside my own. I had long held a desire to join one of the leading guarding contractors, and promote change from within. There was very evidently a mutually-held vision.”

Bluestone duly joined Initial in March last year from Integra, a consultancy that he’d formed post-BSB Group days, and quickly learned that his own outlook on the industry is also shared wholeheartedly by Initial Security’s new managing director Richard Moule. The two of them immediately discussed setting up a training academy that would promote professionalism in the security sector, and CASE was born.

Clients want to deal with someone who understands their professional issues, which means that our people need to be able to talk clearly about threats to business and understand how they might respond to them

Mike Bluestone, managing director, CASE

The holder of an MA in Security Management from Loughborough University and an accredited trainer for the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM), Bluestone is head of faculty for CASE. His core team of 13 Initial Security trainers are all faculty members, all City & Guilds-registered and 100% compliant with the SIA’s requirements. “There are also 10 support trainers, all of whom are equally well qualified,” he adds.

Bluestone has been shrewd in appointing an external advisor – Tom Mulhall, head of the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management at Loughborough. The Security Institute’s chairman Bill Wyllie is also acting as an independent external consultant.

“The reason we’ve called it an Academy,” continues Bluestone, “is that we are also offering professional security consultancy, investigation and due diligence training courses. Initial’s technical solutions manager David Brown is helping to develop the consultancy offering on the systems side, while I concentrate on the people skills and related areas. On a personal level, I have been able to integrate much of what I was doing at Integra into this new venture.”

Prior to the official launch – from last March, in fact – CASE has been embroiled in an up-skilling programme aimed squarely at Initial Security’s own managers. By the end of 2005, Bluestone had trained 150 managers in “the philosophies behind professional security”. In particular, this training is aimed at those who manage client relationships on the ground – training that was previously limited to conventional management skills and behaviours.

“We know only too well that our clients today are predominantly sophisticated individuals. A good many of them have a pretty detailed knowledge of security management,” suggests Bluestone. “Clients want to deal with someone who understands their professional issues, which means that our people need to be able to talk clearly about threats to business and understand how they might respond to them.”

CASE will also add gravitas to the bespoke training Initial Security can offer non-sector employees in a bid to help them instil a security culture – for example, by bringing in an Israeli security consultant experienced at guarding sites vulnerable to suicide bombing attacks to lead a training session with senior managers of high risk organisations here in the UK.

“All of our training, be it in-house or otherwise, is being bought under the auspices of the Academy,” adds Bluestone. “It gives added weight to the value of this training, in that having CASE means we can bring in external specialists and then provide instruction across a much broader range of topics. We think those trainers will feel more comfortable by being part of a collegiate environment. We can also envisage opportunities for external accreditation as a result of forging links with colleges and universities.”

When pressed as to which academic institutions are in the frame for a possible partnership, Bluestone would only say “a number of them”. Clearly, the tie-ups he’s looking to secure are very much akin to the current relationship being nurtured between ARC Training International and Middlesex University thanks to the visionary endeavours of the former’s managing director David Cresswell. At present, Bluestone is hopeful that like-minded CASE Partnerships will be announced “sometime early in 2006”.

Going beyond the minimum

Mike Bluestone is a great believer in the maxim that minimum training standards are just the starting point. That is why he has set about developing additional training for contract security officers tailored to the specific vertical market segment in which they are being asked to work. In short, training that’s designed to mirror client needs.

“Minimum standards. Not a term with which I readily identify,” states Bluestone with conviction. “It pretty much implies that once you’ve attained the basic benchmarks laid down by the SIA, or whomever, you then don’t need to think about going any further than this. That’s totally the wrong attitude to adopt. We want to offer maximum standards, not the minimum.”

With this in mind, Bluestone and his training cohorts have introduced Training Plus, a new programme to supplement the generic, mandatory training required for licensing and deployment to site.

There’s a suite of security management courses on offer wherein we can teach contract managers the basics of business management, finance and IT. Not the core of security teaching, that’s true, but these topics are nonetheless vital to the discipline in this day and age

“Training Plus affords our officers at least another one or two days’ training per year. Training which is both client and company-specific. The outcome of this is that training becomes far more tailored and bespoke in nature. We are now in the midst of developing sector-specific learning programmes.”

For officers working in roles that engender high levels of contact with members of the public, that training might well focus on customer care issues. Those operating in the bonded warehousing environment can learn how to deal with suspicious packages, and ways of maintaining the ‘sterility of surroundings’, etc.

Most critical to the delivery of Training Plus, however, will be the team of in-house support trainers that supplement Bluestone’s day-to-day trainers. “Our support trainers’ duties might include either contract or portfolio shift management working out of the regional offices in the South and the North of England, the Midlands and Scotland. Given that a lot of our training programmes are based on the ground, in the business, these people have a detailed knowledge of their own commercial area,” explains Bluestone. “They’re City & Guilds-qualified, so it’s logical for them to impart their knowledge.”

Bluestone is very obviously passionate about the impact that the training of contract security officers can have, not just on the business but on employee satisfaction. He comments: “Security officers are often deployed in static guarding roles. It’s easy for them to become bored and de-motivated. Training really reconnects them with their raison d’être, rekindling their enthusiasm for the role. A security officer that has been properly trained and enthused is a born again individual. If we can make officers see that there is so much more to security, and offer them a way forward, it will also help frame future career progression routes.”

Looking to the future

Bluestone was specifically brought in to Initial Security “with a brief to establish a dedicated in-house training academy and competency centre”, pulling all of his 16 years’ experience as a security consultant and investigator working on behalf of corporations in the private and public sectors to the fore. With the set-up phase completed, what next?

“This is just the beginning of my work here,” he enthuses. “We fully acknowledge that there is still much to be done. We are some way off an environment in which end users are paying more for the delivered security service. That is why we are looking to go beyond the bare minimum in officer training, for example. If we can instil higher skills levels then clients will pay for the additional benefits they receive from employing better operatives.”

Bluestone is also keen on breaking free from training within the security sector per se to encompass the education of BIFM members in all matters relating to his own chosen discipline.

When I suggest that perhaps security managers need one degree level qualification to which they must aspire in order to prove their professionalism, Bluestone suggests a Post-Graduate Diploma in Security Management, with additional Certificates in Contract Security Management, Sales and other elements of the role.

For the time being, Bluestone has already helped Initial Security to increase its new business and contract retention figures. A “substantial investment” has been made in CASE, but the paybacks are beginning to be realised. ‘Speculate to accumulate’ is the phrase that springs to mind, but it’s one that’s usually absent when mentioned in parallel with the security industry. Initial ought to be commended.

Clearly, given the will to succeed and the right backing, money can be made to talk.