Page 99 - SyI Quarterly - Q3 and Q4 Edition 2023

Security Design - Collaborate

or Commiserate

Jennifer Ciolfi CSyP

As Security Professionals, we have been fighting a war for
decades. “Bring us in earlier!” we shouted as we were
handed completed projects and finished sites that we now
have to retrofit to include a sensible security design. For
years, we’ve been lamenting that “if only we had been
invited to the table earlier, we could have incorporated our
design into the construction and fit-out”. The good news is
that we have been heard, the bad news is that we haven’t
been great at making friends at the table.

Over the past decade, I have had the exciting opportunity to work on redevelopment and
construction projects from £1M to £400M and the biggest thing that I learned, and learned
painfully, is that collaboration is worth its weight in gold. As a Security Project Manager or
Consultant everyone at that table knows our goal. Our goal is always to deliver the safest and most
secure final product. But, when it comes to how we propose achieving that goal, the devil is in the
details. And contrary to perhaps our instinct, contrary to mine, telling people that we know best
and that our best ideas are uncompromising, is not always the best avenue to success.

In 2013, I was three months into a new job, working on a high-security design build that was
already 18 months into the program. I was taking on a project, mid-project. In formal terms, we
were well into the technical design phase (RIBA stage 4 for the extra technical). We have all had
to step in mid-design, and it is a good thing that we take over because we always know better! We
know better than the previous manager, the design consultant, and the architect, and it is now our
job to tell them how much more we know and how much money needs to be spent to redesign the
project to meet our new (and obviously better) design plans. I am sure you can imagine my
surprise when instead of impressing and amazing everyone with my great ideas and my
outstanding knowledge of in-depth security designs, the other members of the project team were
less than enthusiastic about my contributions.

How could everyone not be aligned? How was this possible? Of course, it was far more important
to put a camera where I thought it should go; what do you mean by “Historical marble facade”? It
was ridiculous to me to think that the best security plan possible should be compromising anything
for aesthetics. I also suffered from the delusion that I could win this argument by fighting harder
and being more unyielding.

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