Facility Managers and Security Managers Appreciation of Roles and Responsibilities - Article Example

Facility Managers and Security Managers Appreciation of Roles and Responsibilities Name Institution Introduction Planning a built environment’s security architecture and managing security requires an ongoing collaboration between the facility managers with security manager. According to Smith and Brooks (2012), a built environment refers to the man-made structures or edifice in cities or towns designed to offer a setting for human activities. It ranges in degree, such as from a personal residential house, a high-rise building, to an atrium building housing hundreds of stalls. Of particular concern within the context of this paper is a high-rise building. As Smith and Brooks (2012) argue, the health of the population within a high-rise building has to be taken into consideration, as the perception of safety for the occupants is significant. To a considerable extent, the security management at the built environment serves to generate and inculcate the perception of safety. However, constructing the build environment is not enough as the security and health of the individuals who are expected to use the facility throughout its lifecycle must also be taken into perspective. This is where the security manager and the facility manager come in. According to Scholl et al (2010), a security manager is a professional involved in recommending proper strategies to attain optimal security objectives, crime prevention, risk management, loss control, and investigative roles. Obviously, a rewarding aspect of a security manager is an opportunity to manage and control the security of the built environment (Tsohou et al. 2015). They also ensure that security threats and controls are in balance through a holistic systems approach to security (Bogers et al., 2008). On the other hand, facility managers are professional in charge of managing and controlling human interaction within the built environment with the view of supporting and improving the key objectives of an organisation. This paper argues that current facility managers and security managers must appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities. It critically discusses the statement within the context of managing a facility, and the technologies used within a typical high-rise building. Managing a facility Current facility managers and security managers must appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities as they both intend to. They should function in partnership for their divergent operations to be successful (Doleman & Brooks, 2011). Divorcing the facility manager from the security manager is difficult as they both have interrelationships and dependencies (Smith & Brooks, 2012). Supporting and controlling human activities The facility and security managers work within a built environment to support and control human activities like transport systems, parks, cities, towns and factories. Of particular concern within the context of this paper is a high-rise building, which refers to multi-story structures where a majority of the occupants have to rely on elevators to get to their destinations (Sinopoli, 2013). They also offer extensive work or space within a small footprint of land. An example in the United include the Sears Tower in Chicago that has a footprint of nearly 50,000 square feet, providing 4.5 million square feet of floor space, which is some 90 times the footprint area (Challinger, 2008). However, the quality and type of a high-rise edifice directly affect the level of security in the building. Therefore, the security concerns should be integrated in designing, developing and operating the facility. Essentially, facility management comprises the set of practices associated with coordination of the physical space or workspace with the view of maintaining and creating facility services, which are capable of supporting and improving the key objectives of an organisation (Sinopoli, 2013). However, facility management, like security management is a concept denoting provision of support functions to a facility's operational activities. While the facility manager appreciate the need to consider the security concerns of a facility, Smith and Brooks (2012) consider that security maintenance should remain their responsibility to ensure that the users of the facility are safe and secure. On the other hand, the security managers identify and satisfy these needs. Controlling human behaviours The facility and security managers work within a built environment to control human behaviours with the view of ensuring safety and security. Throughout its lifecycle, the built environment directly affects how the occupants or users experience safety, as well as how they behave. In which case, security and the built environment are strongly interrelated. According to Smith and Brooks (2012), a building’s lifecycle undergoes several significant stages, such as the design phase, construction phase and occupancy or use. Smith and Brooks (2012) further acknowledge that facility management applies in the built environment’s life cycle towards the stages of the construction phase and all through the occupancy phase. Doleman and Brooks (2011) also explain that facility management plays a crucial role in the built environment, and makes up nearly 30-40 percent of the annual budget of an organisation. Facility management adds value to a built environment as it improves service delivery and resource control to the occupants, which is however unattainable unless the occupants’ perception of security is optimistic. Similar to security management, facility management requires that the facility manager operate at multiple levels within an organisation. For instance, in a typical workday, he may have to discuss technical safety issues as well as suggest the possible solutions with the health and safety manager, as well as discuss critical strategic facility issues with the executive management (Smith and Brooks, 2012). According to Doleman and Brooks (2011), facilities management is a broad-spectrum term that covers various services like building maintenance, health and safety management, contract management, financial management, and real estate management. Its role is a major function in the management of the resources of a facility, management of the workspace and support service. Technologies in typical high rise building Recommending, designing and maintaining security technologies Security managers and facility managers must operate in tandem to recommend and maintain security technologies in typical high-rise building. Pertinent research shows that disorder, crime, and emergencies are ongoing security issues in high-rise building that require the security managers and facility managers to operate in tandem (Smith and Brooks 2012; Doleman and Brooks 2011). These, therefore, demand situational security approaches, including installing ongoing rather than one-time physical security technologies, promoting a sense of community in the built environment, and lastly making sure that the building would be well maintained (Fenelly 2012). As the tall buildings, especially the high-rises, have become prevalent, the safety and security of the users of these buildings need consideration. According to Challinger (2008), high-rise buildings are potentially vulnerable to security risks, such as emergencies, disorder and crime. Despite this, the physical nature of high-rise buildings requires diverse security emphases and facility management. As the high-rise buildings are known to contain many occupants, as well as property in the build environment that, however, restricts movement using staircase and elevators. Facility manages would ensure that the staircase and elevators are well maintained, while the security manager ensures that they are properly designed in a way that would provide safe evacuation of occupants during emergencies like fire (Carter et al., 2011). Additionally, the corridors, elevators, and lobbies, which make up a large number of sections of high-rise buildings, have to be designed and managed in a manner that allows for better fire evacuation. They should as well be installed with close circuit television (CCTV) cameras to monitor the movement of people in the building. Here again, the facility manager and the security manager must work in tandem. The likely security approaches that would need to be integrated in the building include lighting, CCTV, access control, and security officers. Managing these features is critical, but can only be attained when there is collaboration between the security managers and facility managers, otherwise they would not attain their aims (Scammel, 2008). The security manager would liaise with the building architect and designer to make sure that the corridors and lobbies are designed in a manner that allows the physical security features protect the built environment from potential offenders. On the other hand, the facility manager would subsequently make sure that these physical security features are maintained based on instructions and directions from the security manager to make sure that they are in working order. As Challinger (2008) explains, the unspecified and strange masses of individuals who have to move through the common areas in the high-rise building offer fertile grounds for potential adversaries to achieve their aims. Integrating security systems in high rise buildings The facility managers and security managers must as well work in tandem to integrate effectively the security systems in high-rise buildings. While the security manager aim at achieving solid security bottom-line reasons for integrating security systems in the existing or old built environment, they may still face a variety of problems such as missing information to legacy systems. The information may be provided by the facility managers, who maintain documents on the building and its occupants. It is crucial to also not that systems integration serves to bring about substantial benefits to the old or existing high rise buildings. By linking two systems functionally, the facility managers can get to understand the system’s capabilities that the security managers may not be aware of. An integration that happens with the fire alarm system is a good example. For instance, the fire alarm may be set to also trigger the Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to control smoke during a fire emergency, and the access control system to offer egress for evacuation of occupants. When an automated integrated systems lacks, all the components would need to be adjusted manually (Feruza & Kim 2009). It would be difficult for the security manager to automate the security system independently without the facility manager who maintains data on different sections of the existing building. Integrate systems requires combining of the system data. Essentially, the facility manager is not restricted to simply accessing data from one section of the building system. Instead, he maintains a database with many systems, containing holistic data, which can be examined and correlated to come up with useful building metrics to enhance security operations. The security manager would require the unified database to effectively integrate building management system. Hence, the facility manager serves to bring all the facility data into a single database architecture, which the security manager or professional uses to design an integrated security system. Managing risks in high rise buildings The security manager and the facility manager work in tandem to manage security threats in a high-rise building. The security threats in a high-rise building are classifiable into three groups: crimes, disorder, and emergencies. The crimes category includes the threats of burglary, theft, terrorism, elevator assaults and sabotage. The disorder categories are, on the other hand, behavioural issues such as suicide risk, hostage attacks, drug dealing, and drug-associated behaviours such as physical assaults. Lastly, emergencies are human- or nature-caused disasters like fires, biochemical attacks, elevator failures, tornados, tsunamis, and earthquakes (Kumar & Sharma 2013; Coole 2010; Brauch, 2007). According to Coole and Brooks (2014), the security risk management should be planned and executed using a systems approach or the theory of Defence in Depth while taking consideration of the theory of entropy. Within the context of the roles of security managers and facility manager in risk manager, their relationship is obvious. For instance, while the security managers may succeed in installing the physical security features in response to managing the threats of fires, biochemical attacks, or terrorism, failure to manage these features may result to security decay. Indeed, the study by Coole (2010) also showed that defence in depth strategies are significantly hampered by disorganization and decay that underpin entropy. Therefore, for a high-rise building to maintain an effective security profile, the entire Defence in Depth elements should be maintained by the facility manager to ensure they maintain their optimal performance levels (Coole et al., 2012). Coole (2010) argued that security management should employ the concept of entropy to understand concept of security decay in a built environment, in order to establish what reduces the overall system performance and in turn to avoid these factor through active maintenance and monitoring. Sjorberg et al. (2007) perceives risk management to entail the processes of planning, organising, controlling, and maintaining the resources of an organisation to curtail the likely negative impacts on the protected environment. The approach to risk management is a systematic process that requires the identification of exposure to threats, evaluation of methods for managing risk, implementation of mitigation strategies, as well as recurrent performance monitoring of the mitigation strategies and apply the necessary modifications to these strategies (Vellani, 2008). These should follow a systems approach, which requires the collaboration of all the parties involved in risk management, such as the security manager and facility manager (Coole, 2010). The systems approach is recommended by the Australian Standards in risk management (AS/NZS ISO 31000: 2009), which embraces the risk management concept as requiring collaboration in planning how the resources of an organisation can be managed effectively managed to trim down the probabilities of negative outcomes (Australian Government, 2010). Conclusion Current facility managers and security managers must appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities as they both intend to. They should function in partnership for their divergent operations to be successful. Divorcing the facility manager from the security manager is difficult as they both have interrelationships and dependencies. The facility management, like security management is a concept denoting provision of support functions to a facility's operational activities. While the facility managers appreciate the need to consider the security concerns of a facility, security maintenance should remain their responsibility to ensure that the users of the facility are safe and secure. On the other hand, the security managers identify and satisfy these needs. The facility and security managers work within a built environment to support and control human activities. They also work within a built environment to control human behaviours with the view of ensuring safety and security. Security managers and facility managers must operate in tandem to recommend and maintain security technologies in typical high-rise building. They must as well work in tandem to integrate effectively the security systems in high-rise buildings. They must also work in tandem to manage security threats in a high-rise building. 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