Pictured at yesterday’s ST19 Glasgow conference at the Hilton Hotel in William Street are Maxine Fraser of the Stirling-based Retailers Against Crime (RAC), and Les Allan, director of safeguarding at Heriot-Watt University.
Les, Scotland region chair of the association of university chiefs of security (Aucso), gave to the event a picture of how campus security has moved on from the days of locking doors (and checking doors were locked). As his title suggests, and as at other universities, campus security has re-branded (while still protecting assets) into the more general safeguarding of student and staff welfare.
That fits in also with the ever more international scope of British universities, and how unis are seeking to meet a duty of care to student-customers, whether students are studying in a foreign land (Heriot-Watt has campuses in Scotland, Dubai and Malaysia) or have a Erasmus scheme placement in another European country, or are carrying out research or an internship in some remote part of the world. Hence Heriot-Watt’s use of the SafeZone incident reporting and notification software from CriticalArc, which won an award at the recent OSPAs in London.
As for the actual in-house security staff providing services, whether patrolling and engaging with students or monitoring in the 24-365 control room, it’s meant a change of routine; new, blue uniforms; and efforts by Heriot-Watt to reflect the at least 50-50 mix of male and female students by recruiting and bringing on more women in the department. As Les said: “We changed our whole marketing approach, to try to get more female applicants, mostly because if you look at university populations, we are more than 50 per cent females.” Les, like other campus security people, and indeed corporate security and any other security people looking to get messages across to young workforces, has had to come to terms with the fact that young people do not use and indeed ignore email; communications have to be through apps and social media; hence Heriot-Watt’s year-long search for a notification product, and choice of SafeZone.
Les also gave something of a flavour of the sheer size and boom in higher education, whether it’s the number on campus – Heriot-Watt on its main site on the outskirts of Edinburgh may have 15,000, and thousands also visiting outside of the regular academic terms, for example for graduation ceremonies or schools and colleges bussing in potential students taking a look (which takes some arranging of car parking, another hat that Les like other campus security heads has to wear).
Les Allan is due to host the next Aucso annual conference in April 2020. Visit www.aucso.org.
Trevor Jones, the chairman of Aucso, is among the invited speakers at the next Security TWENTY event, ST19 Manchester, at the Principal Hotel by Oxford Road railway station on Tuesday, July 2. For details and to register for free entry visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/manchester/.
