Since I launched the security branch of Smart Revolution in 2021, I have been asked many times why we have decided to create it and train personnel on travel security for high-risk countries. I have been reflecting on it since we started, and I believe that what guided me, or better pushed me relentlessly, is based on two main factors.
My first point is that training on personal security is life-saving. Since I opened my company, I have been trying to share this point as much as possible, to raise awareness within companies, organisations, media agencies, to organise specific events with relevant stakeholders to talk about it. Travel risks need to be taken seriously and personnel need to be prepared to prevent, mitigate, and manage these risks in the best way possible. The outcome of a work travel should not be left completely to good or bad luck.
Even if luck remains an important factor as Murphy’s law teaches us, a lot can still be done. In more than 10 years spent training personnel (about 1.500 people) on personal security, I have witnessed first-hand the importance of this type of preparation, not only for people with no field experience but even for people that had been operating in very complex environments for a long time. I got so many feedbacks, even months after the trainings ended.
People told me what happened to them, how they reacted, how we had analysed and tested those scenarios right during the course. People told me so often about previous incidents, how the awareness and skills acquired could have made the difference on the lives of others who did not make it and died during their assignments, or how they could have made a difference for their team members. So, it got crystal clear in my mind that training on personal security matters because it makes a difference on the life of people, because every life lost during work is one too many.
Then something else came up in my mind, which is the second factor of my motivation. Training on personal security is extremely difficult to find. Currently there is a very limited number of opportunities to attend high quality trainings on personal security. Courses so specialized and complex to organize like the Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) are not easy to find, especially in Italy.
When I mention HEAT, I refer to trainings organized in proper outdoor training areas with equipment, qualified instructors, space for simulation and testing, and many other requirements. In light of my previous experience in the ENTRi WG on Certification and quality inspector, I cannot see this training without certain fundamental requirements. There is still quite a bit of confusion on the issue, this is why I was happy to contribute to AIPSA Manual on Travel Security for SMEs and provide some clarity.
Anyway, just to keep it short(er), I wanted to make this opportunity available for more people, and also in Italian. Then I decided that a “one size fits all” approach on travel security was not really working for me in supporting different types of clients with different needs, levels of risks, countries of destination and profiles of people travelling. So, I created a more diversified approach to personal security, still within well recognizable standards, and a variety of security trainings of different length, intensity, modular and complementary offers, special trainings with a specific geographical focus, tailoring of SOPs and missions’ tasks for ad hoc trainings, and finally a Security Mobile Training Team.
Whenever people cannot reach our standard outdoor facilities, we move, we see what is available, and we customise our scenarios to needs and location. I can say that we can really work with great imagination and scarce means (or big means as the tv studios in Spain in the picture) because ideating and implementing challenging security scenarios is what we do best and what we are most passionate about.