Unique Lessons in Multi-Agency Protective Security, Counter-Terrorism, and Emergency Preparedness

Andy Thompson talks with Mark Scoular, founding Director at Protect and Prepare Ltd, a multi-agency protective security and preparedness consultancy, providing high level strategic, tactical & operational interoperability from the development of policy and doctrine to hands-on delivery, training, testing and exercising and gap-analysis in any given high threat/risk environment both domestically and internationally.

What brought you to establishing Protect & Prepare?

The ten to twelve years prior to launching Protect & Prepare were spent in a senior leadership level within the Metropolitan Police where I was responsible for delivering generic emergency preparedness tasks: crisis management, leadership, mass evacuation, mass casualty, alongside the London Resilience Forum. I became more focused on, and took over, Risk and Policy Management for the dedicated CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear] units in London, for Policy & Risk Development, where with colleagues, I wrote the Olympic CBRN plan.

From there, I took over Emergency Preparedness planning for the London 2012 Games. Just before the Games started, my dream job came up – the National Special Forces and Military Liaison Officer inside of MD for the Counter Terrorism network. I rebuilt that role as the Head of Domestic Prepare, which is one of the strands of the UK’s CT strategy, and sits under the National Coordinator for Protect & Prepare.

[”Protective Security” involves people, places, buildings, and events. “Preparedness” covers police, fire, ambulance, military, business, and the community – and how they can work better together during time of crisis].

I had many qualifications within Protect & Prepare from CBRN, Gold, Silver, Bronze Commander, to Public Order Commander, all of which takes you through to being able to be not just competent but credible in that space.

I also sat on a strategic board for JESIP, Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme – for the first five or six years of its existence, so I know it inside out, and I really believe in multi-agency working, as a principle.

In 2015, I deployed to Tunisia following the attack in Sousse, to review how the Tunisians did business, and I built a team off the back of it called the Joint Overseas Protect & Prepare (JOPP).  This reported into the Joint International Counter-Terrorism Unit, in the Foreign Office, under Jane Marriott, who is now moved on to become the British Ambassador in Kenya. I had a team which was then growing exponentially, globally, and that is where I was, when I decided to retire in November of 2018 and launch the commercial venture.

The really important takeaway is that I and my colleagues have developed a very specific global view of the challenge around multi-agency preparedness and training.

This has developed within you a unique perspective and approach to training multi-agency preparedness?

Yes. It is our USP in Protect and Prepare Ltd. We have an absolutely credible and unique view of the world from a Policing, Fire, Ambulance, military and business perspective of protective security preparedness, counter-terrorism and emergency preparedness. Instead of just attending a training course or two, we have years of experience, developing multi agency policy and doctrine with governments and with the service providers; understanding the challenges and the impacts of the decisions you make throughout the organisation – and how all of that relates to the private sector as well.

What’s the structure of your company, for delivery purposes?

We have about 50 associates, and my co-Directors have highly specialized Police, Fire and Rescue, and Ambulance service provision, with equal government level multi-agency planning experience. We are extremely well connected and so we have created a very compact but hugely flexible associate database of highly experienced and credible professionals in this space. We only employ people we have worked with – who know their trade – and trust implicitly.

How have you developed and translated your public sector agency experience into the commercial sector?

Within Protect & Prepare we work with the Hotel, Travel and Tourism sector. The “Hotel Security Working Group”, which is coordinated for by OSAC, the Overseas Security Advisory Council (a joint venture between the Department of State and the U.S. private sector, created by then Secretary of State George Shultz under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to interact on overseas security problems of mutual concern). I have spoken at several of their events, which provides a forum to challenge thinking in global multi-agency training and preparedness.

The fallout from the attacks in Egypt, and Tunisia and other places in North Africa, meant that the British public decided they were happy to travel further. South East Asia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia became the holiday destination of choice. Consequently, I got to work with all the seniors from the Hotel Travel and Tourism sector and assisted them in some of their key security frustrations. Together we looked at how all the Police, Fire and Ambulance services worked in all these different locations in order that we could find a middle ground. How can the hotels use their front of house staff as their “eyes and ears”? What is it that the hotels have got “forward deployed” in some other hotel lobbies, so if a bomb goes off, they can start giving trauma and triage treatments? Conversations which, if you land them in an appropriate way, if you get them engaged, make a big impact.

We are also working to deliver multi-agency doctrine for the Qataris prior to the FIFA World Cup in Doha. They have aspirations regarding the Olympics and just landed the Asia Games in 2030. It is a very small country with huge logistical and security challenges ahead. We have spent the last 18 months developing bespoke policy and doctrine for the Qatari Police, Fire, Ambulance, Military, and National Command Centre to work better together. COVID dependent, we hope to go back shortly to test, exercise, and quality assure, organizationally learn and assist in embedding that across all of the emergency services and command-and-control systems.

We are also working in Necker and Mosquito Island in the British Virgin Islands, delivering preparedness around bespoke challenges that you have when you operate in a small island with tourists. But it is multi-agency, and more – not just Police, Fire and Ambulance, it’s broader than that – commercially, it includes business itself, which is certainly our next step as a company.

And lastly, we also have the capability to do single service work, of course. We have seniors from the Fire Service, the Ambulance Service, the Police Service, and obviously private sector acumen, with FTSE 100 Security leads. We have an abundance of hostile environment training experience: I was an advanced police pursuit driver, a multiagency Gold Incident Commander, a CT security coordinator for London, for example. My co Directors also have the same experience for the Fire and Rescue service at a national level.

How do you engage your target market in Hotel, Travel and Tourism – direct business development or through the national planning authorities?

It’s both. I personally know many of the VPs and global leads around the Hotel, Travel and Tourism industry. But also, I know seniors within OSAC who have got outreach into that world, through the Hotel Security Working Group. I have still got all my Police, Fire and Ambulance strategic lead contacts in all those different countries as well. I am lucky enough to be able to go directly to some very senior figures, following relationships I have been developing for a number of years.

What do you see on the horizon for businesses in respect of multi-agency planning and preparedness, and your involvement in it?

“Martyn’s Law”, and what fell out of the Manchester enquiry attacks, will come to the fore. That’s going to be legislated for, probably in 2021, whereby companies are going to have to prepare counterterrorism plans for their organization, as well as make sure that their EP (Emergency Plans) are upgraded and relevant – no point in having a plan that merely gathers dust in a cupboard. Large risk consultancies will likely get a lot of work in this area, but will probably pay inexperienced people peanuts, and they will get it wrong! So, we’re carving out a little nest for ourselves in this space.

[*Martyn’s Law proposes that the Local Resilience Forum be obligated to consider terrorism as a threat or risk and should develop and implement a local response and recovery plan to a range of threat methodologies.]

How do you develop your training courses?

The training courses are bespoke for whoever it is that is receiving them, and I think that is really what is unique about the business. If I tried to land an already written JESIP course for the UK, in Indonesia, for example, it simply will not work. That applies equally to the ACT for Terrorism* courses, which are all excellent and free via the web. Suspicious items, suspicious people. What to do if you spot suspicious people? All these courses are already there in a range of different languages. They work in the UK but simply do not overseas.

[*The ACT Awareness eLearning is a free online counter terrorism training course for all UK based companies, organisations and individuals].

We have a principle-based approach to delivery. We adapt principles to the environment we are in. We deliver interactive tabletop exercises, workshop immersive courses whereby we put them in a position where they are having to make decisions and then understand the impact of those decisions and do it in that way rather than have an “off the shelf” package of courses, which is not our company. We simply do not do that.

If we are not giving clients anything which is unique or bespoke, we are essentially not understanding the cultural values. We are not listening to what it is they actually want. We are just shoehorning in a course because it happens to be already written. Well, that is not right for me. I’d rather go over with a blank piece of paper. We like to find out for ourselves what it is that we believe that you need, as opposed to you telling me what you think you need. We will then write something for you and send it back together with some comments, and you tell us what you think. That’s the way to do business. It works for us, and it works for our clients.

What trends are you seeing? How has the training thinking and delivery in multi-agency preparedness evolved?

Technology. I am going to cite my wife’s company as an illustration of the difference in professionalism between public and private sectors. She is a virologist, a microbiologist, and the Director of Training services for Veeva Systems. The way that they do their training is just outstanding. It is a completely blended, accredited, credible, robust approach which does not change for anybody, and has no favours. It is all about customer relationships. It is all about compliance. It’s all for the pharmaceutical industry, all of which is accredited and above board and absolutely done in the most professional way I’ve ever seen.

It leaves the public sector in what I can only describe as a shambolic state, by comparison. I think that the way that they do business there with technology – because everything they do can be easily switched to being online as it is to deliver in person – is the way to go about it. That is the way to go about doing business, I think. It just works so well.

What are your thoughts regarding “standards” to which you deliver courses?

My world is more about organizational preparedness and is not something which is laid down in a certain accreditation. It is bound by just how forward thinking and progressive the senior leadership team are in the organisation or if that senior leadership team have been made vulnerable because they have been shown to be vulnerable because of attack.

We look at organisations and at the culture of those organizations and embedding, in an appropriate way and the right levels, how they can go about making themselves more effective in preparedness, as well as identifying strategically powerful partnerships to make that even better.

What challenges have you come up against or do you foresee in the delivery of training?

Obviously, I have got to refer to COVID-19, because the biggest challenge for me right now is about getting overseas. I have been stopped from going overseas for a little while now, as have my colleagues. So, the challenges are around that, right now.

The second challenge is that we believe the travel and tourism industry is going to just take off exponentially over the next few years. People will want to travel again in a huge way. The interesting thing about that is that there has been, for all the obvious reasons, a significant downturn in the number of people going on holiday, and that means that the impact on the travel and tourism sector is profound. That said, those who have seen fit to invest in that marketplace – the Hiltons, the Marriott’s – have continued to build the hotels, and know only too well that as soon as this is behind us, the whole world’s going on holiday for the next few years!

My contention is, on speaking to these people, that you must not put planning onto the back burner because, more now than ever, you need to make sure that your business continuity plans; your emergency preparedness plans; your menu of tactical options should things go wrong; your corporate lines; how your senior leadership team performs; what is happening inside your hotels – all this is more relevant now than it has ever been. They have got the plum choice of either investing a modest amount of money and getting that right, ahead of time, or just being an open invitation for people to walk in with a bomb, or whatever it may be, and blowing themselves up.

As it is such a potentially complex beast, what should your potential clients be looking for when it comes to a provider or an instructor in preparedness?

Credibility, flexibility, professionalism, passion, resonance and loyalty.

They are core values, grounded from my time in the Military. They are the reason why I am still a rugby referee. They underpin my entire life. They’re the reason why I can look someone in the eye and say, “I’m going to take your dollar and give you the best I can possibly give you. And if I don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll be the first person to know it and I’ll find somebody who does”. So, for me, credibility is not just because it says so on paper. It is credible because you’re actually speaking to somebody who knows their trade.

Mark can be contacted via email on markscoular@protectandprepare.co.uk

Visit the company website: https://www.protectandprepare.co.uk/ 

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