RiskUKOctober2017

SBD and CPTED: Security’s Pivotal
Role in the Construction Sector
For each building
planned, designed
and built to become a
new part of our city
landscapes, architects
and design firms are
very often the first
links in the chain. The
ingenuity and skill
that they bring to
construction design
processes is
undoubted, but even
these central
individuals need
helping hands. Philip
Strand argues why
security professionals
must be brought into
the process at the
earliest stages
Dr Philip Strand PhD MBA:
Senior Risk Consultant at
CornerStone GRG
22
www.risk-uk.com
Cities continue to grow across the UK. Even
the most conservative construction
industry forecasts predict at least 1.2%
growth through 2018 and beyond. Although
that number may seem small, this equates to a
commitment of more than £500 billion worth of
projects focused on infrastructure, private
housing and commercial properties within the
next few years.
Construction project teams include not only
architects and designers, but also structural
engineers, investors, city planners and a
multitude of other stakeholders who are all
well-qualified to make contributions to the
design process. All too often, however, security
professionals with bespoke education, training
and experience in building operations are
brought into teams far too late to have any
appreciable influence on security-related
aspects of building designs.
While there may be reasons for late
invitations going out to security professionals,
this oversight can come at a significant cost to
both building owners and, more likely than not,
a building’s future users.
Quite sensibly, most designers begin their
projects with the building’s ‘user requirements’
in mind. Early in the design process, workshops
are held to determine the activities that will go
on within the building and how the building’s
users should benefit from its existence.
By way of documents that are logically
similar to the Operational Requirements
Reports of the Centre for the Protection of
National Infrastructure, designers, architects
and engineers conceptualise their buildings
inside and out to meet people’s stated needs.
User groups and their spatial needs, aesthetic
requirements and emotive goals, as well as
practical concerns about Health and Safety, are
all captured in ‘user requirements’ at the early
stages of projects.
Principles of security
Practical requirements related to security,
however, are very often either left out or
woefully underestimated at the early stages of
projects. This occurs not as a function of
designers or other stakeholders being oblivious
to security as a requirement, but rather as a
result of project team leaders mistakenly
viewing ‘security’ as a collection of cameras,
turnstiles and card readers that can all be
simply bolted into the walls and floors after the
majority of the building has been planned (and
sometimes even constructed).
Excluding principles of security from
influential ‘user requirements’ documents and
excluding security professionals from project
teams during the early phases of design
reduces the chances that the building will be
inherently securable which, in turn, increases
the likelihood that awkward, excessive and,
ultimately, more expensive security solutions
will be required after the building is phased
into everyday use.
The idea that early engagement can enable
security professionals to have positive impacts
on construction projects isn’t new. Further,
Secured By Design (SBD) and Crime Prevention
Through Environmental Design (CPTED) are two
well-respected programmes that seek to make
buildings and spaces inherently more secure
before they’re even built.
SBD provides guidance for ‘designing-out
crime’ by ensuring that buildings’ perimeters,
walls and other features are configured in ways
that make it difficult for criminals to operate.
Roads and footpaths leading up to buildings
are also considered from a security perspective.
For its part, CPTED operates on a deeper,
more psychological level. CPTED promotes the
use of basic design principles that make
criminals feel uncomfortable and ‘observed’ to
the point that they’re deterred from causing
trouble in an area. The principles of CPTED
encourage people to come into spaces and use
them for legitimate purposes such that others
cannot use those spaces for illegal reasons.
By incorporating CPTED principles into
building designs, crime can be measurably
reduced, thus cutting back on the need for
expensive technological solutions and
increasing the efficiency of those technological
systems that remain necessary.
Not only are SBD and CPTED’s design
recommendations normally ‘cost neutral’ (from
a design perspective), but they can also reduce
security guarding costs, lessen CCTV camera
requirements and cut back on material losses.
When these reductions are factored into
operating expenditure estimates over the
lifetime of the building, early engagement with
security professionals can then readily be seen