Return to Virginia Business - December 2001

by Brett Lieberman

When Gene Samburg enters buildings to assess security, he often signs his name as "Donald Duck" to see if guards are paying attention. Often they are not. He uses other tricks as well. At one building in New York, security checks were so meticulous that it took visitors 50 minutes to gain admittance. Samburg still managed to compromise security. After he got in the building, he photocopied his visitor’s badge when no one was looking. He used it days later when he revisited the site.

Corporate executives want to protect their employees, their clients and their physical plants. There is plenty that can be done. Heavy concrete planters added to driveways can thwart car bombers. Materials and the design of windows and doors can be upgraded to withstand blasts and bullets. More sophisticated access systems can be added, including biometric ones that identify employees by the unchangeable iris of their eyes. More cameras can be installed and steel beams put in place. New X-ray machines in mailrooms can spot mail bombs and there are even infrared devices that can scan letters for anthrax and destroy the spores.

But all of this costs lots of money. For even small businesses, top-level security can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and even up into the millions. Some companies have gone on spending binges that are over-the-top. Yet purely reactive moves can be window dressing that may make management executives or tenants feel more secure without adding real protection. "A lot of people who haven’t got a clue are just throwing manpower at the problem, and it’s a joke," says Samburg, whose company helps protect 70 percent of Washington, D.C., area commercial properties. "People should ... stop knee jerking and think about it for 10 minutes."

The first step for harried managers is to consider if a property is really a target. Though many companies are concerned about security, not every building is really that important in the eyes of terrorists. For example, a building that houses sensitive government agencies or a business that does defense work or whose attack would seriously disrupt the economy or threaten lives should get serious attention. This category might include telecommunications switching centers, electricity grid or natural gas control rooms or chemical plants that handle large amounts of toxic gases. Yet other companies whose work is not that immediately critical or whose offices might be in more remote areas may not need increased security. "You have to be pretty honest about your threat level. Do you really need steel beams?" asks Bill Dean of M.C. Dean Inc. of Chantilly. The firm provides engineering and technical services for security, telecommunications and energy systems.

To help bewildered clients, Samburg has developed a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation to help companies ponder their needs as well as what’s practical. Most properties can be made safer, but he and other security experts say every building does not require a Fort Knox level of protection.

Once they consider how good a target they are, executives should draw up a disaster plan. "One thing that doesn’t cost much and should be the first step is to develop a plan," says Dean. Companies need to practice just as they would for a fire drill. Should disaster strike, what steps should employees take? If a site went down, where would data and records be stored? It’s hard to be prepared to take a direct hit from a Boeing 747. Businesses, however, should do a blast study — a complete structural analysis of how windows, exterior surfaces and physical security systems would react to an explosion.

Manager of structures less likely to be hit can boost their security easily and relatively inexpensively by applying common sense. If building managers add guards, they need to be well trained. If they invest in electronic access and surveillance systems, they need to be monitored constantly. Even modest measures can save you. As salesmen say in the home security business: your security only has to be good enough to convince a burglar to rob your neighbor rather than you. But beware: if security cameras are available and not maintained, this could become a nettlesome issue in a post-attack lawsuit.

For managers of higher-risk buildings, security experts advise thinking in terms of three concentric rings around the property. The outermost circle is the edge of property or campus. The middle ring is the building itself. The innermost ring consists of guards and electronic access points.

Usually, however, the outer ring is ignored — to the peril of the people working nearby. "Historically, all that security has taken place in that middle ring," says Mark Oakes, president and chief executive of Intellimar Inc. of Sykesville, a manufacturer of bulletproof windows and blast-resistant doors. "The 11th brought into focus the need to address the outer ring. The goal is to control access to the facility."

Experts recommend placing barriers such as setbacks, from 75 to 100 feet from roadways. Barriers can range from architectural pre-cast plant-ers to less aesthetically pleasing jersey barriers. Bollards, or thick concrete or steel barriers, can be erected to stop vehicles for a few thousand dollars each. Also highly recommended are hydraulic vehicle barriers such as those used around the White House that can quickly pop up to stop a truck or car, but these can easily run $120,000 or more.

Another promising new technology is one that combines video surveillance and facial imaging technology. With it, software can scan video images at the pixel level for objects, such as a gun or truck, or detect situations like a vehicle speeding toward a building at more than 25 miles per hour. "You can have so much video information coming in a building. ... It’s one thing if you have the Secret Service sitting there monitoring it. It’s another thing to have people that are less trained," says Dean. These systems, derived from technology developed by the entertainment industry, start at around $500,000.

If the least expensive and easiest hardening is often at the outer ring, the most expensive can be strengthening the structure itself in the second ring. Analysis shows that 80 to 85 percent of all injuries or death from a terrorist blast are from flying glass. Even small investments to shield employees from glass injuries can prove the most effective. "If you’re planning to do some renovations anyway and there’s something you can do and it’s inexpensive, why not do it ... ?" asks John Strauchs, of Systech Group Inc. in Reston.

Solutions include adding specialized window glazing that make windows resistant to bullets and blasts, steel supports around windows and a blend of materials — from concrete to more absorbent gypsum walls — that would be capable of transferring a blast’s force outward or to another desired direction to mitigate effects. Even cheaper solutions involve window glazing or blast curtains that can resist fire and bomb fragments. "Kevlar" fabric inside walls can help mitigate damage and injury at a relatively modest cost.

More sophisticated and much more expensive blast-resistant windows have dramatically proven their worth. Ones in the newly renovated Pentagon were credited with providing valuable minutes for workers to get to safety before the building and steel supports collapsed. But simply adding blast windows is not an easy answer. For one thing, the Pentagon-type windows cost $10,000 a piece. Adding them may also require expensive building modifications to the structure. Otherwise, the window will deflect the blast, but the walls will not be able to absorb the pressure and will collapse. Many of the still-visible steel beams added at the Pentagon prevented the building’s walls from shattering when American Airlines Flight 77 careened into it at nearly 460 miles per hour.

Strauchs endorses the use of concrete and steel plating to reinforce columns and upper slabs. By doing so, building owners can direct the force from a potential blast in a way that injures the least number of people and causes the least damage. In most buildings, the force of an explosion would naturally go upwards, but it could do less damage if improvements are added to force it sideways.

Inside a building, biometrics can add a higher level of defense in terms of personnel access. Now that germ warfare is a real threat, some companies are producing special X-ray machines that can scan mail for bombs or use infrared rays to kill any anthrax spores in letters or packages.

In recent years, structural engineers, builders and property managers have benefited from new studies on how buildings respond to violent actions. Their data comes from studies of earthquakes and the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. For example, recent studies show that most buildings are designed to hold their weight vertically. Instead, says Strauchs, engineers need to add breathing room, redirecting forces outward or in a desired direction. Additional concrete, especially around critical support columns can make a stiffer building. Steel beams are fairly elastic and able to absorb a powerful shock. The World Trade Center proved this — at least until its beams finally melted in the heat generated by thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel.

What’s more, with the flurry of studies now underway since the Sept. 11 attacks, there’s certain to be an even deeper body of knowledge on containing damage from blasts, fires, bullets or biowarfare attacks. Property managers will have even more security choices at cheaper prices. Too bad this knowledge is coming with such a high price tag in terms of human lives.

Return to Virginia Business - December 2001