Page 16 - the SyI Quarterly 13 - (V4)

Know your Institute
Know your Institute

BECRes Special Interest

Group presents at Regional

CPD Event in Newcastle

- By Alan Cain FSyI

In 2019 I joined the NHS as an EPRR (Emergency
Preparedness, Resilience and Response) specialist,
having spent the previous fifteen years working in
security risk management. One of the questions I
get asked most by former colleagues in security is
what is the relationship between the two disciplines?
On Tuesday 15th November 2022 I was asked to
give a presentation on this very topic at the Security
Institute Regional CPD Event at Northumbria
University in Newcastle Upon Tyne. This brief article The discipline of Emergency Planning clearly plays a part in all four of these categories. However, the
attempts to give a summary of the contents of my other risk management professions also play a vital role, with security playing a key role in mitigating
presentation. against terrorism and health and safety professionals playing a key role in preventing the occurrence
of both ‘infrastructure or system failures’ and ‘accidents’. This disciplinary overlap plays out not just
If I speak to colleagues who are security managers at the level of emergency planners working across the blue light services (police, fire and rescue
and ask where they believe security sits in their and ambulance service), the NHS, the UK Health Security Agency, the Environment Agency and local
organisation, they tend to answer pragmatically, authorities, but also at the corporate level where the security manager may be heavily involved in the
based on where the security department physically planning.
sits in their organisations corporate structure.
Typically, the answer is ‘Facilities Management’ or To take an example, consider a corporate ‘evacuation and shelter’ plan. There are numerous reasons
‘Estates’. Conceptually however security has nothing why a corporate head office may need to fully evacuate, partially evacuate or lockdown. It could be the
to do with either. Rather it is, alongside Emergency result of a structural, power or other utility failure; an explosion or suspect package; adverse weather
Planning and Health and Safety, a sub-set of the such as flooding; a fire; a release of irritant fumes or hazardous materials; or even a terrorist event.
much broader discipline that is Risk Management. Who gives the order to evacuate or lockdown the building? For what type of incident? And how will this
be communicated?
Broadly speaking disaster risks may be divided into
four types: (1) Natural hazards including diseases, for For anyone wanting to take the conversation further check out the BECRes Special Interest Group,
example flooding and COVID-19; (2) Infrastructure which consists of four core streams covering: Business Continuity, Emergency Planning, Crisis
or system failures, for example the collapse of the Management and Resilience.
Morandi bridge in Genoa; (3) Accidents including
those leading to exposure to hazardous materials, You can find the BECRes Special Interest Group on the Community Platform here: https://community.
for example the Buncefield oil storage facility fire; security-institute.org/communities/community-home?CommunityKey=db26b77b-5358-45d7-af27-
and (4) Terrorism or those due to malicious acts, for 72bddba0e710
example the Manchester Arena attack. Around the
world in an average year there may be as many as
700 disasters, of which the majority (about 60%) stem
from natural hazards.

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