Sage Conversations

Are We Seeing True Collaboration in 'All-Hazard' Design and Management?

  

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"There are currently no universal codes or standards that apply to all public and private sector buildings. However, most designers agree that security issues must be addressed with other design objectives and integrated into the building design throughout the process. This will ensure a quality building with effective security. This concept is known as an 'all-hazard design'." 

This was taken from the Whole Building Design Group (WBDG) Secure/Safe Committee sponsored by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS).

The Multihazard Mitigation Council (MMC) which also is sponsored by NIBS has documented that for every dollar spent on mitigation a minimum savings of $4 is achieved in the community (aka 'society').

If the following benefits are true, then we should be witnessing true collaboration between private companies real estate and facility groups and the risk and security professional service teams in the community. As well, the architectural, engineering and construction companies would see their offerings best served by establishing a 'seat at the table' with these same providers.

The benefits of such an approach and collaboration might be:

• Collaboration between public and private organizations around 'all-hazard' design

• The formalization of a risk assessment to help drive the design addressing probability and possibillity risk/reward investment

• The formalization of a security technology architecture to formalize the design of the network, devices and software that will create the optimal solution that maps against the risk assessment thereby avoiding unneccesarty duplication of effort between IT, Building Systems, and Physical Security.

I would like to hear from risk and security executives and professional services organizations on how they are influencing and achieving all-hazard design and what their perspective is on the value constraints and challenges they face.

Are we making progress as an industry?