Specialisms
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Built environment and public realm security
Built environment and public realm security
Counter terrorism and protective security designed into schemes rather than bolted onto them. Vehicle dynamic assessment, hostile vehicle mitigation strategy, and security requirements that survive a planning process.
Every stage you wait multiplies the cost of the eventual answer. Ideally, levels and landscape do most of the work before rated product is specified.
Security arrives late in most schemes.
By the time anyone asks the question, the levels are set, the drainage is designed and the only remaining option is a line of bollards across a frontage that was meant to be open. It is the most expensive point at which to intervene and it produces the worst public realm.
The other failure is specification without assessment. A product is chosen because it appears on an approved list, without a vehicle dynamic assessment establishing what impact energy the site can actually generate. Sometimes the specification is over-engineered by a wide margin. Occasionally it is nowhere near sufficient.
We would rather be in the room at RIBA Stage 2 than asked to justify something at Stage 5.
Four stages.
Named deliverables, not outcomes language
Vehicle dynamic assessment with the calculation basis stated
HVM strategy drawing and mitigation plan
Performance specification, product-neutral, for tender
Planning support: security statement, condition discharge, committee-ready summary
Design stage reviews against the strategy as the scheme develops
Operational requirement for CCTV, lighting and access control where relevant
Two thirds of the rated product removed, and the frontage still reads as public realm.
How this actually plays out
On a town centre scheme the initial brief assumed a continuous line of rated bollards along the primary frontage. The vehicle dynamic assessment showed that no approach could generate the energy the specified product was rated to, because of a bend and a change of level two hundred metres out.
Reprofiling one build-out and using the existing tree pits removed roughly two thirds of the rated product from the scheme, and produced a frontage the design team and the conservation officer would both accept.
Who is this for?
Clients about to sign for a security installation, funders and insurers who need an independent opinion, and design teams who would rather have their proposals tested before they go out to tender than after.
Next step
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