Private Sector Leadership - Designing Security into the Built Environment

I met Barabara Nadel a well known Architect at the New Stock Exchange event sponsored by TISP and DRII on March 21st.

Meeting her reinforced my believe; that away from the tumult of a decade of political dialogue in Washington, there is quiet but significant effort underway in the private sector  by design and construction professionals to make our nation safer.

Barbara has written extensively on designing security into the built environment. She edited a comprehensive handbook on Security. I plan to review it, but the Table of Contents and first chapter seem to cover the waterfront of the topic by over 50 contributors.

Building Security: Handbook for Architectural Planning and Design by Barbara A. Nadel 2004
http://www.barbaranadelarchitect.com/book_overview.php

The thesis of her book; Achieving Transparent Security through design reminded me of my own experience at the University of Maryland Medical System. We had a bad security situation in the medical center in the late 80s , but after careful master planning and steady facility improvements over time we were able to improve the security of the operation without creating an armed camp.

I'll keep you posted on my findings.

Thanks for checking in;

Dennis

http://www.drs-international.com/

Applied Disaster Resilience: Private-Public Convergence

Last week was a whirlwind of activity from New York City to Washington, DC.

The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP), the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII), the All Hazards Consortium (AHC), and Domestic Preparedness Journal/DomPrep 40 each held events exploring the issues of Private-Public Sector Disaster Resilience.

I could only attend 2 of the 3, but was delighted by the energy that these initiatives have generated. All three events were interrelated and demonstrate the way forward. If a true "Whole of Community" capability is to emerge, it will require sustained leadership by the private sector.

The New York Stock Exchange hosted the TISP-DRII event on Monday, March 21st that explored the status of the PS-Prep Program. DHS officials attended and many senior Business Continuity leaders from major companies shared their thoughts about the standards based program.

Wells Fargo, Disney, and Pfizer were well known names in the audience.

The design and construction industry was also well represented. Besides Al Romano, there was Bob Prieto from Fluor, Cathy Carr Clinch from URS, John Friedlander from Cushman and Wakefield, three representatives from Parsons Brinckerhoff,  Barbara Nadel; an architect who has written a book on Security Engineering, and Mike Chipley from PMC.

I saw this as the beginning of a long private-public conversation. TISP and DRII will collaborate on a white paper to DHS as the outcome of this discussion.

Al Berman (DRII), Al Romano (Michael Baker, Jr.), and William Anderson (TISP) deserve great credit for this symposium that emerged from the DomPrep 40 event at the National Press Club last November 2010.

The AHC meeting was held at the Newark Airport Renaissance Hotel to discuss Regional projects both in the public and private sector realm. I was very impressed by the quality of the projects and especially the work that New Jersey has done with the food industry.

Joe Picciano from New Jersey; current AHC President, has painted a clear vision of the AHC's focus on integrated planning by the private and public sectors. I had the privilege of moderating the second day's discussions on March 22nd.

The panelists from Morgan Stanley (Gregory Ferris) , Wakefern Foods (Michael Ambrosio), and Sprint/Nextel (Richard Zinno) were outstanding. They committed almost the entire day to the project panels and their involvement made a major contribution to the discussions.

The goal will be to hold several follow on workshops that are industry specific with owner/operators in the Region. The Private Sector panelists were Continuity leaders from their companies. Richard Zinno is a DRII certified Continuity Professional.

Ira Tannenbaum from NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM) discussed a very interesting preview to his initiative to weave private interests into the Urban Area Preparedness in New York City. It was fascinating how highly evolved the projects are from NY/NJ and Philadelphia. Scott Di Giralomo (Morris County, NJ) and Noreen Cardinali (NJ DOT OEM), and Joe Liciardello (SE PA Task Force) and Captain Walter Smith (Philadelphia PD) presented excellent projects on their private sector initiatives.

I missed the DomPrep meeting in Washington, DC on March 21st. It was a recap of the survey led by DOMPrep 40 member; Bob Stephan (Dutko Worldwide), on the work being done to plan for and protect Special Events which are generally large scale gatherings. I would have loved to hear this and will look for the survey results.

Al Romano, Joe Picciano, and I are also members of the DomPrep 40 and believe the effort is a solid contribution to the private-public convergence process. I am optimistic that this type of continued dialogue will aid the convergence of language that will lead to true Private-Public convergence.

Thanks for checking in,

Dennis
http://www.drs-international.com/

Craig Fugate Paints a Compelling Vision at HSDECA

This was a busy week.

Let me start by referring you to my website to see the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) 2010 Annual Report.
http://www.drs-international.com/
MIPT is establishing itself as a solid niche training program for Line Officers in the Intelligence Collection process.
Police Chiefs love it because it provides training that can be used for All Crimes and is part of their routine annual training.

I also attended the 5th annual Homeland Defense and Security Education Summit at University of Maryland University College (UMUC) in College park, MD. I'm on the faculty at Towson University and was delighted to hear the progress that is being made in Education programs.

The program is sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School, Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium Association (HSDECA) https://www.hsdeca.org/, UMUC, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Craig Fugate was a keynote speaker and he delivered a compelling vision for his Whole of Community and Maximum of Maximums Strategy for Preparedness. His key themes were that we must view the public as a resource rather than a liability, that we must build teams with the private sector, and that we have to plan for hard events not easy.

His vision demands a major culture shift in the private and public sectors and requires long term emphasis on educating future leaders and practitioners in the Disaster Preparedness Community.

I've heard Craig deliver these themes many times before and hope we are all successful in building the capabilities to make it a reality.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader
http://www.drs-international.com/

Planning, Design and Construction Professionals Focus on Resilience

The key to long term Resilience is the linkage of the Public Safety and Design and Construction communities.

I was delighted to attend an event this week organized by Engineering News Record in partnership with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and National Building Museum.
The meeting was held in Washington, DC. and sponsored by several design and contruction organizations. See the link for the other sponsors.

http://construction.com/events/2011/mitigatingdisaster/

The title of the meeting was of particular interest:

Mitigating Disaster through Design and Construction

The panels included very practical presentations by a multi-disciplinary group of private and public sector professionals including significant representation from the Insurance Industry.

I was particularly impressed with the presentations by Julie Rochman from the Institute for Business and Home Safety and Robert Fenza from Liberty Property Trust.

The Institute is a recently constructed and an innovative test facility that performs tests on built structures.

Robert Fenza spoke about reducing costs for insurance by achieving more effective facilities.

The meeting was an encouraging step forward by the Design and Construction industry to focus on Resilience. I hope this is just the beginning.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader

http://www.drs-international.com/