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Avoiding the road to ruin

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For Canadian companies, ‘Security Insurance’ offered by the G4S Incident Management Centre helps them shoulder new corporate responsibilities


The team from G4S Canada’s Incident Management Centre (IMC) are skilled in determining the vulnerability of any organisation and offering solutions.

Their services are in demand as businesses are confronted with corporate security planning requirements that are being placed on the shoulders of busy corporations by governments.

Senior executives must now be concerned with the threat of corporate negligence law suits and government sanctions, should any aspect of incident planning be found wanting.

Corporate Liability or Director & Officer insurance often precludes payment or coverage if personal negligence is suspected – a frightening thought for any board of directors.

The traditional answer is likely to involve setting up an elaborate standby command centre - which can be very costly for a facility that may be rarely used.

The perceived return on investment involved makes it a questionable exercise for many companies, particularly as on-going table top exercises are also required to ensure that the Incident Management Plan (IMP) is viable.

Combine all of these demands and interest inevitably wanes; money in that “never used” budget is siphoned off to real needs; and “do we really need that room with all its bells and whistles?” becomes the growing chorus.

An alternative solution: use the services of a dedicated incident management team


“Within days of meeting with the IMC team even the largest and often most exposed client can be effectively prepared to deal with even the most severe situations.”		“Sensible planning, prudent budgeting and sustainability are what our customers receive,” explains Derek Humble, who is responsible for the highly focused Toronto based Incident Management Centre (IMC).

Chris Tait, G4S Canada’s regional vice president, Corporate Security and Investigations, adds: “Within hours the IMC can issue emergency contact cards to key corporate decision makers giving them access to the IMC’s dedicated and recorded incoming live answered contact line.” The IMC offers various versions of IMPs that, while not a perfect match for individual organisations, are better than an old, no longer relevant document - which is what many have.

Instant Guidance, Worldwide

These G4S incident plans are offered for consideration and, once adopted, are signed back to the IMC team as the corporate plan that will be embedded into the IMC database for instant 24/7 reference and review.

This means that those at the site of a corporate incident anywhere in the world can not only use the IMC to link themselves through to corporate decision makers at any time but also ask for instant guidance through agreed response steps, ensuring that the correct and agreed directions are given to those at risk or at the heart of the situation.

Management time put into a system such as the G4S IMC is measured in hours rather than days, yet the return on that minimal investment can run into millions of dollars.

The G4S IMC in Canada blends its core incident management planning services with high quality and leading edge tracking technologies.

By using live online remote video monitoring the IMC team are able not only to help track people and assets worldwide but, through the incredible global reach of G4S, provide “corridors-of-safety” to its customers around the world.

These can take the form of secure accommodation or airport meet-and-greets in most cities. The IMC also has the capability of watching and monitoring with its exclusive Traveling With Intelligence Guidance (TWIG) cellular phones that can be tracked across 85 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

Though this technology is not new, it is the instant interactivity offered by TWIG’s duress button that makes such an important contribution: once depressed and held for three seconds it launches two separate lifelines. The first is the triggering of an SMS open audio channel that runs from anywhere in the world directly into the G4S IMC in Toronto. This audio signal allows for the location of the device to be displayed on the emergency tracking screens inside the IMC and an incident intervention officer can, within seconds, see where the problem is and hear what is happening.

So, how best to describe the highly focused and specialised work of the G4S Incident Management Centre, whose experts can not only advise corporations on how best to shoulder their security responsibilities, but offer solutions?

It has been called by some “Security Insurance” and the team is more than happy to adopt that as an accurate description of its core competencies.

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This page is an edited version of the article featured in the September 2007 edition of International.
Download the full article: application/pdf Avoiding the road to ruin

Get more information about the Incident Management Centre or Corporate Security & Investigations provided by G4S in Canada
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The killer questions

1. Do you have a 24-hour recorded, incoming line answered instantly only by people qualified to guide you through an incident of a potentially ruinous nature?

2. Is there a reasonable and well thought out IMP in existence and available immediately for reference?

3. Is there a tested and effective key management contact system in place that is sustainable and realistic?

If the answer to each of these questions is “No”, the obvious next question is: “What are you going to do about it?

Even if each receives an unqualified “Yes”, the final question must be asked:

4. Have you ever tested your system?

This last question often highlights the weakest link in the incident/emergency planning system for most organisations, many of which believe the cost to implement and test an incident plan is too high and, anyway, assume events that could lead to corporate ruin will not happen to them.

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