Security guard industry looks ahead

Published July 08, 2005
GSN - Government Security News, Laura de la Torre and Jacob Goodwin

Private security firms have become an essential part of the nation’s homeland security, providing uniformed guards to protect not only government buildings, but also critical infrastructure facilities, transportation hubs and public officials.

GSN’s Laura de la Torre and Jacob Goodwin spoke with top executives from three leading guard service companies and probed for their thoughts on this ever-evolving sector.

Daya Khalsa, Senior Vice President of Akal Security Inc., of Española, NM; David Westrate, Chief Operating Officer of MVM, Inc., of Vienna, VA; and Marc Shapiro, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, the Wackenhut Corp., based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, spoke about government procurements, the future of security guards, labor unions and more.

GSN:
What’s the difference between your government and corporate customers?

Akal:
Our government clients are very focused on our ability to integrate and coordinate with their law enforcement agencies.

Primarily, on the government side, you’re working in support of a professional law enforcement agency or in-house security team with very strict protection standards and very high levels of security requirements. The government is looking for your people to match that level in order to understand and integrate with that level of law enforcement and security.

On the corporate side, we find our clients more concerned about the culture of their corporate environment; combining security with that culture; and with a real understanding of how they do business.

Wackenhut:
There used to be a great distinction, but the advent of things such as the GSA [General Services Administration] federal supply schedule -- which a lot of federal agencies are now beginning to understand and utilize in their sourcing -- has made the procurements more of a ‘best value’ type of determination. That has long been the approach of many commercial customers. We’re gradually seeing more of a line between the commercial and the government buyer. Their needs typically are a little bit different. The commercial side are using more procurement or sourcing teams, where you have representatives from purchasing, from security, perhaps risk management, maybe human resources, and operations or facilities. On the government side, typically it is strictly a contracting officer that’s dealing with the procurement. When it comes to the final decision, we’re seeing more of a ‘best value.’

GSN:
In this sector, what are the real growth areas for your company?

MVM:
The war and the shortage of personnel are causing opportunities for the private sector. That’s not only reflected overseas, but I think you see that domestically, where in the past year a number of military bases that have traditionally had proprietary guard forces have now gone on contract. The whole issue about security in the courthouses is becoming a bigger issue. There’s going to be some reassessment and, perhaps, some reconfiguration in how guard services are provided in federal, state and local courthouses across the country.

Wackenhut:
The potential for risk assessments is probably what we consider the boom area. We have seen an increase in government customers looking for high-end capabilities. You come in, do a security or site assessment, look at where their threats might be coming from, determine their vulnerabilities, and then put a plan and a recommendation in front of that customer to protect them. Risk assessment is something we’re seeing. I think we’ll continue to see a tremendous interest in.

GSN:
How does your company balance the use of technology and personnel?

MVM:
Traditionally, guard services have been procured by the government without a lot of integration. You almost never see an RFP that combines both things, but the technology is developing slowly. The government is slow to react, but there are some new things out there, such as smarter portals that require fewer human beings to man access control points. Technology still compliments the human being -- you can’t take the human out of the equation. Looking more to the ‘best value’ approach makes sure that the human is capable of complementing the technology, and vice versa.

Wackenhut:
You usually don’t have an incentive in many government contracts to bring forth those sorts of [technology] opportunities because again they’re different pots of funds, from a technology standpoint and the guarding of a security service site. If you were to see more sourcing opportunities where there was a convergence -- and look at it as a bigger overall security program -- you would see many of the guarding companies starting to bring in system integrators and look for opportunities to deploy technologies that would reduce staff.

GSN:
How do you train your guards in counter-terrorism, so they’ll be more alert for a possible terrorist attack?

Akal:
It’s a variety of things. Everything from awareness of what a terrorist attack could look like at the beginning -- how someone could be dressed or could appear if they were trying to bring hidden explosives into a facility. We train on the ability to identify improvised explosive devices, with various screening devices, X- Ray machines, magnetometers, hand-held detectors. The government has assumed that if they take a former law enforcement officer or military person or someone with security experience and put them in a screening situation that they will be instant expert at screening. But, the reality is that they’re not. We do a lot of additional training in how to detect hidden weapons and improvised explosive devices with that equipment. We use videos of actual terrorist attacks which have occurred in order to take our people through them step-by-step, from the beginning to the response phase, and we let them experience what people went through in those situations.

GSN:
Let’s talk about labor unions. How have your companies reacted to union efforts to organize your workforces at various job sites?

Wackenhut:
If you’re proactive in your approach to employee relations, take care of the employees wages and benefits, give them meaningful employment, career advancement opportunities, train them to do the job they’re expected to do, and supervise them properly -- empower them -- you really have an employee who doesn’t necessarily need to seek formal representation.

The problem we are facing right now is what we consider to be an attack on the entire contract security industry. The Service Employee International Union [SEIU] is considered a ‘mixed union’, which represents not only security guards, but also represents other service employees. The problem we have is that this is contrary to what the Congress enacted in the National Labor Relations Act, Section 9-B-3, which specifically precludes a mixed union from representing security officers because it does act to protect the client, whether it be commercial or government.

Wackenhut does not feel that that’s in the best interest of the employees or the customer or the industry. We think employees should have a choice – first, whether they want to be represented; and second, by who. We think the customers should not arbitrarily be brought a union just because the companies signed a national agreement.

MVM:
We have 20 different unions we’re working with, and we’re getting by with that. When you’re bidding on these contracts, you have to keep your costs down in order to be competitive and win. What that often means is that you cannot build-in rate escalations in the out years. A lot of times, these groups have to unionize in order to be able to assume there’s some expectation of pay increases down the road.

If there were more ‘best value’ types of procurements that had retention plans which would include wage escalations, for example, we could, perhaps, avoid some of this unionization. More of a forward look by the government, not just the lowest possible cost but, ‘How do we ensure that these employees are granted some sort of status?’ is very important.

Akal:
It makes sense for employees to be represented if they want to be. It gives them a seat at the table. It puts them in a position to represent their interests. The biggest problem we run into in the security business is with very small unions that do not have the professional expertise that the larger unions have. They can make it difficult to form a partnership with those unions, and for them to have a vision of how to support the ultimate mission of the work and the professionalism of their people.

So, we tend to see our unions contesting many things that they shouldn’t be contesting. There are many disputes and grievances over issues that really could be worked out in a different context. The flip side of having small specialized unions is that there can be a lack of professionalism in smaller unions that can be difficult to work with.

Copyright: GSN - Government Security News, 2005

Link: http://www.gsnmagazine.com/jul_05/security_ahead.html

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