Pioneering Hostile Environment & First Aid Training with a “Digital First” Format

Andy Thompson talks with Chris Lawton, Founder of Silk Road Training, who provide online, 360 degree and physically immersive courses that make life-saving hostile environment skills accessible to all.

Training through Virtual Reality Technology

What was the genesis of Silk Road Training?

Grant Wootton, my co-founder, and I have been delivering training, amongst other functions, for several years. One of the things that had always bothered me personally was that there was a vast community of people, internationally, who did not have access to training, either through reasons of cost or location, or political circumstances who, I believed, required it.

It is often quite a difficult situation, where the costs of getting good quality training, particularly Security and First Aid, are quite high because of the infrastructure, the travel, and the supply of the facilities to deliver decent training. There is quite a high financial barrier which, for many people, made it inaccessible. Coupled with that, the logistical challenges – travel, the difficulty of crossing some borders and leaving some countries and getting trainers into other countries – are extant. So, that was my premise and I wanted to help build a solution and construct a good course that could be accessible anywhere by anyone and put it at an affordable level as well.

That was the concept behind Silk Road Training: to meet that unanswered need.

What was your experience prior to establishing your company?

Prior to Silk Road I had worked as the Head of High Risk Services at First Option Safety Group who provide fantastic in-person, traditional hostile environment, first aid and travel safety training courses. They provide training to the FCDO; HMG Stabilisation Unit, as well as some other really significant contracts, like the BBC and a range of media and production clients and other NGO clients as well. I had been running that on the high-risk side for that company for about four years.

Prior to that, I was with Bloomberg’s security team, with the BBC High Risk Team, and I was in the UK military before that. So, I have developed experience as a client, buying training services, to then managing the provision and the delivery. I kept moving into smaller and smaller organisations until now, it is my own – with Grant as well, of course.

So that was how I came to launch Silk Road Training. I had always had the view that there was just something slightly different to be done.  

What is the nature of your training?

Our core products are what people would recognize as Hostile Environment and First Aid Training. We break it down into a modular format that people primarily access online, but we also accompany that with scenario-based webinars. We run these using an avatar in a real time scenario. The participants in the webinars interact with the avatar and control that person through the scenario. They are providing input about what they can do, what could happen, and so on. It is a very dynamic. It is more than in a webinar, it is a live event, effectively. Those accompany the online content. Coupled with that, we build in elements: we use 360-degree media where people can observe a scenario as part of the lesson and its accompanying lessons. We use AR – augmented reality. We can use digital models. We try to use as many digital means as we can within our capability, but what we always ask is that whatever country, whatever location, are these tools going to work for me? It always has to come back to that premise of being accessible and usable because there are some incredible digital tools out there which are quite easy to access here in the U.K. or in other parts of the world, but elsewhere they are not. So, we must always ask whether, if you are in a remote location, poor infrastructure, and all you have got is a data signal or a Wi-Fi signal and a handheld device, can you still do our course? The answer for us always needs to be yes because that is the person we want to reach out to.

That is very much the nature of our training. It has got to be affordable for that person. That leads into the model: it might not sound like the most robust business model, but it is. There is a volume driven business model there. Eventually, what Grant and I would like to do is write ourselves out of the training, whereby the capacity to do this training exists locally and we are not really needed as the drivers of it anymore. There are other people in other communities, in other parts of the world who can lead it and drive it and be the continuous thread through the training. That is when it could get really exciting because people can apply regional nuances, the security considerations specific to them, but we are all networked using the same set of tools, and that is where we would like to keep heading towards as well: a capacity building phase in the training delivery, which is to come.

You deliberately set out to be a “digital first” organisation?

Absolutely. It has been strange for us the past year because some people have used us as a COVID-19 solution. Which we did not set out to be, although I can see why, because what we do fits perfectly for that – but we did not set out to be only a business continuity measure!

We set out Silk Road Training to go “digital first” because we both believed that there were some significant changes in the way that training could be delivered. We both believed that most training organisations would need to encompass those changes at some point over the next few years, and we want to be right on the leading edge of that. We want to be the organisation that was making those changes, and that everyone else would be following and learning from us.

Initially we wanted to have a year to test the idea, the concepts, seeing if people would even do it; who would take it up; how they would respond to it; what worked well; what did not. All the questions that a new business wants to ask itself anyway. So for this we built a minimal viable product.

Then COVID hit. I was reminding prospects that this is our most basic concept, and they can use it, but just be aware of that – and they did not really care! They still wanted it because the fact that we had come up with that idea, and that we wanted to drive those changes meant we were already there. We were ready with something for people to try out. COVID-19 put people into that place almost straight away, which was interesting! Within a few weeks we effectively had a year’s worth of product testing. This level of feedback has been phenomenal. It has got us out there a little bit in a way that would not have happened otherwise, which is a good thing!

We had our first customers about nine months ago, but since then it has been used in over seventy-seven different countries already, which is amazing! It is still, for me, a minimal viable product though and it will be interesting what we can achieve as it becomes more high fidelity.

Is “Silk Road” a nod to the history around the ancient trading routes and who is your primary target client?

It is a nod towards that, but not entirely, because “Silk Road” is also a digital reference as well. There is a slight “dark web” undertone to that. The Silk Road is where you can buy all sorts of things. The reason we liked it is there is an online marketplace reference as well and knowledge has value, we belong to a knowledge-based economy. Obviously, the Silk Road at the time, when it first started becoming a thing, was like a pioneering new trade route, which opened up new markets, new tastes, new ways of doing things, so that is where that nod comes.

We target organisations that have a dispersed global workforce that need to deliver training at scale, in an affordable but effective way. Currently, we focus on media, and human rights defenders. I would like to start exploring working with other NGO and aid agencies as well. That is where our niche is, because that fits very well with providing something that is both accessible and affordable. There are a lot of organisations who have a massive footprint globally. Organisations like the ICRC, Oxfam, Save the Children, as well as media organisations and freelance journalists, human rights defenders – they have a lot of people globally we can help protect. Some will have access to a very high level of training. They will be put on hostile environment courses, security courses, first aid courses, and that is fantastic. However, the challenges of delivering training to everybody in an organisation is hugely expensive, which probably results in a lot of people not receiving any training. Think about local drivers and local producers and all the other people who contribute to the operations of an organisation. That is where we can provide a really neat solution.

In terms of affordability and accessibility, what are the typical lengths of your courses? How much time do people have to commit to them?

We design things in a modular way. You can do a short first aid course in two to three hours. Equally, to complete all our online content – a security and first aid package – if you are fitting it around your day-to-day work, but you have to do two to three hours in the evening, you could probably do it across seven days to 14 days. The reason there is a bit of variance is that because it is online it is self-led, and it depends how much you want to practice, revisit, and refresh your knowledge. If you already come at it with an existing level of knowledge of the refresher, you could probably whip through the content, but it is good to revisit the content. Someone coming at it who has never done any of it before, might want to do it two or three times, just to get a bit of memory, do a bit of practice with whatever props and equipment they have got at home as well. Some organisations prefer to structure their training over a month, with weekly live webinar events to support the content. I’ve found this works really well too.

So, it can vary, really, but I would say for someone going at a reasonable rate, fitting it around their day-to-day life, they probably can play all the training in seven to ten days.

Looking ahead to market trends, you clearly see an opportunity in fusing digital with Safety and Security Training with a digital first proposition?

In the medium term, it is going to be the integration of digital solutions alongside in-person prescient training, because where people can deliver first aid training in person, that is obviously a really good way of doing it because people get the muscle memory and the practice. How the two fuse together is a good question, and I think lots of different training providers will have lots of different creative solutions for that, which is great. There is the development of augmented reality and virtual reality tools to supplement online content, also. I think that is quite exciting. I am always looking out for not just if it is really good and really cool, but also if it is going to be affordable to organisations and to individuals: is it going to be viable?

Coupled with that is the improvement of purely digital online solutions, because that is only going to get better and better, in terms of quality and range of learning techniques that are accessible and available to people. There are three different areas there, all of which I think are going to be really, really interesting over the next two to three years, actually, at different times and in different ways.

This is clearly your competitive differentiation?

One of the things that I never do, and make a conscious effort not to, is to differentiate ourselves by saying we are not this and we are not that. We just concentrate on what we can do really well. At the moment, because Grant, particularly, has a really strong training background, there’s loads of knowledge there. The exciting thing is how we innovate in the delivery of that knowledge and the delivery of full, proper structured courses. What we are trying to do is just innovate in the methodology of delivery. That is where we sit, actually, because there are lots of great companies delivering really good training. There are lots of great new technologies emerging and different ways of using it. We are constantly surveilling all it and asking ourselves how we can incorporate it into delivering a really amazing course. That is where we sit and that is what we concentrate on.

How does digital delivery of some otherwise very practical subjects get accredited?

“When will an accrediting body be confident that an online course, potentially using AR and VR techniques be confident enough to award a qualifying first aid certificate, if ever?”

It is quite an interesting challenge, but it is not one that I am fixated on, actually, but as I said, I think it is it is a question worth asking, because the reason we are here is that for so many people in different parts of the world, the opportunity to get complete accredited and qualified training, is not there. If they could, then I am sure they would take it. What is the next best? Is the next best that they have no training? Probably not. The next best is that they have the best training they can possibly access, which is where we very much fit in.

You have been going less than a year, but are doing really well, delivering content in over 70 countries. What sort of challenges have you encountered so far?

My challenges beforehand were getting anyone to even contemplate trying it, because the market and the training requirement was very much oriented around delivering in-person security and first aid training, which I have done very well out of in the past. That was the challenge even though it is straightforward enough to identify that there are a lot of people out there, large communities, who would really benefit from this. That has really been borne out amongst our user base, we have seen communities of people accessing training who I never could have reached out to before; never could have even got to contemplate completing security training in terms of demographic and location. That has been incredible. That has been really, really amazing, actually. That was all driven by people willing to take a risk because of COVID-19.

My challenge before that was even getting people to contemplate having a look at it. I knew there was a market there, but it is just getting people to buy into the idea. Since then, it has been a slightly different challenge, in that we are still working with what I would call a fairly minimum viable product – because of COVID-19 and the challenges there, we have generated vast amounts of feedback in a quite short period of time, globally, from a really diverse audience, which has been fantastic. What we now want to do is take the time to reflect on that, grow and develop the products accordingly but the demand and the prevailing situation means we have not been able to do that to the extent that we would like. So, the challenge is to manage the growing user base – it almost becomes like a little bit of a risk because there comes a point where you want to be delivering something that is more polished, a slightly more high-fidelity product, which is where we would love to be now.

At the same time, we are still supplying the product – people are still doing the training. Given everything, that is quite a good problem for us to have, all in all.

What frustrates you about the training environment?

Where people really work with you, collaboratively, you can build something really brilliant. They see your ethos, your values, they see who you are, and they can really work with you to create something.

Where people are a bit more absolute and you have already got what they want, or you don’t have what they want, and you don’t have that relationship, then that can be quite difficult and frustrating, particularly if you know you can do something really great for them as well.

What would you advise potential customers to look out for, and what to avoid?

They should try new ideas. They should be willing to challenge – don’t look for someone who agrees with everything that you already think. Find someone who is willing to challenge you with new ideas, new methodologies, and new approaches.

If what you want to learn is fundamental security and first aid skills, look for training providers who can demonstrate a really good, applied understanding of that, too, so you know the content they are delivering is contextualized by really good experience and practical application and knowledge. That is important. I would encourage people to come at it with a very collaborative and open mindset, because if you find a training provider who can work with you, who understands your ethos, understands your values and where you want to get to, then, with them, you can really build something that is really, really fantastic.

Have you seen any courses that you think have simply not been delivered in an appropriate way?

I’ve seen things where training hasn’t worked particularly well for whatever reason. It might be the way that a trainer has misread their audience, for example. Sometimes you might just have the wrong people on the wrong task. Training is a very human science. It is very relationship based, particularly when you are doing in-person training. One of the reasons we set up Silk Road was to find a way we could deliver training anywhere to everyone and remove that dependence on that relationship, on it just being Grant, or whoever it is delivering the training. I think that is sometimes where I have seen things go a little bit wrong, where it is just someone delivering something in a way that does not quite suit the audience.

The cultural fit matters!

That is right. People approach things with differing levels of emotional intelligence and empathy and understanding of the particular context they are operating in. That is always going to be a challenge for any training organisation, particularly when they start to deliver at scale, because when you are pushing more and more trainers out there, you increase the level of risk to your organisation. The ability to control and make sure those trainers are delivering exactly what you want, presents a level of risk and a level of vulnerability associated with that which, when moving things online into a digital means like this, means you can help mitigate because you can control the knowledge delivery to a much, much greater degree.

Who would you highlight as an excellent Training Provider?

Id’ actually like to highlight a previous client who was a fantastic client! When I was at First Option, we had a client called the Stabilisation Unit, which was part of DFID. When we had that contract, they were excellent because we delivered a pilot course and they spent a lot of time working with us to make sure the course was exactly what they wanted in terms of learning objectives, methodology, and so forth. The result was the course ended up being really, really good. It was an excellent course and that was very much down to them being able to collaborate with the training partner. So, giving credit to the Stabilisation Unit and their contract management team is an obvious choice for me. They were all civil servants, they were absolutely brilliant, and a delight to work with.

The other one is an organisation called the ACOS Alliance. ACOS stands for A Culture of Safety and they represent media workers and journalists all over the world. The director is Elisabet Cantenys. Right at the start of COVID-19 she said this is a fantastic opportunity to try out some new ideas, and she was very much on the front foot with that, and I thought that was quite amazing. It made a big difference to us and I think to them as well in enabling them to reach out to new communities.

What we have always tried to do is concentrate on our own ideas and our own game. I am not really that interested in what other training companies are doing, because all that we think about is what we are doing and making it as innovative and creative and engaging as possible, but always coming back to the fundamental premise of what we are doing: it has got to be accessible and it is got to be affordable because for us, it is about meeting a need. It is about solving a problem. Above all else, that is what we are and that is what we are interested in.

Chris can be contacted via email at chris@silkroadtraining.international  or visit  https://silkroadtraining.international/

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