Interviews

Anticipating events

by Mark Rowe

In our January 2017 print issue we have featured Mark Harding, pictured, as the chairman of the trade association the UK Crowd Management Association (UKCMA), warning of a coming shortfall in SIA badged officers. We visited his company offices to follow up, where likewise he warned: “It’s a really uncertain world at the moment, as far as supply and demand are concerned.”

Mark is the MD of Leicester-based Showsec. As Mark said at the conference during the recent UK Security Expo, the UKCMA wanted to do an industry survey, or suppliers and purchasers, as a benchmark. That was duly launched last month online, through the Football Safety Officers Association (FSOA), with the blessing of the regulator the Security Industry Authority – indeed, Mark was quoting SIA figures to make his point about the likely further drop in numbers of SIA-badged personnel.

It’s in everyone’s interests to find out why – as the SIA’s revenue is in licence applications and renewals; and if event security contractors such as Showsec cannot easily recruit door and other security staff and stewards, football stadiums and other venues could find themselves short of staff, or having to pay more (particularly at times of peak demand, such as midsummer and Friday nights and weekends, as Harding told Professional Security after his speech to the Expo). “It’s a real, real challenge for us,” Mark said over coffee in his top-floor office, and he admits that he doesn’t know what the answer is.

“Ultimately, we need to find people who have a licence, who are qualified,” and as he added, there is a difference between having an SIA badge (typically as a door superviser) and being able to undertake the duties; in other words, to prove competent in the job.

For the full interview, see the February 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine. Mark spoke also of the Highfield training qualification in ‘Event Security Operations‘ launched in 2015 and developed by the UKCMA as an alternative to the NVQ qualification commonly used by football grounds for stewards; how Showsec responds to the modern phenomenon of football fans and others taking to social media or filming in an intimidating manner and uploading to Youtube footage or opinions that may be one-sided about the work of stewards or security staff; and responding to recent terrorism against event venues. While the Christmas market in Berlin was attacked by a commandeered lorry used as a weapon in December 2016, for the last few years Showsec has been securing equivalent ‘German markets’ in the UK, in Birmingham for instance.

Partly to manage the thousands of mainly casual staff, like other event security contractors and indeed the service sector generally, Showsec is a big user of social media and online, such as for e-booking of staff. Mark said that when the Bataclan attack happened (the mass shooting in the Paris concert venue in November 2015, as part of a wider night of terrorist attack), Showsec sent an email to all staff about the company’s anti-terrorist training module. “Within 24 hours we had over 1400 people that had reviewed their training,” Mark recalled. That so many went through the online training – which the company can track use of – despite the workforce’s family life or other jobs, shows the power of the online tool, Mark added, ‘but also gives our clients assurance that we are able to review the training given to our staff. It gives them assurance that our staff are at least up to date with the necessary information.”

To carry out the FSOA survey, visit http://www.fsoa.org.uk/survey/.

Related News

  • Interviews

    Biometric recognition

    by Mark Rowe

    Biometrics are the need of the hour for customer experience and security, writes Stan Swearingen, CEO at the fingerprint sensor product company…

  • Interviews

    GDPR goes beyond digital

    by Mark Rowe

    Mark Harper, Head of Office Technology at the shredders and office machines company HSM, stresses the importance of remembering that GDPR goes…

Newsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay on top of security news and events.

© 2024 Professional Security Magazine. All rights reserved.

Website by MSEC Marketing