With London aiming to deliver a safe and secure Olympic and Paralympic Games for everyone to enjoy, security planning is paramount. Police, ambulance and fire services are among more than 20 Olympic security agencies who will be involved from now until 2012. At Games-time, up to 5,000 private security staff will be needed for in-venue security, for which LOCOG itself is responsible.

Project deliverables

Deloitte developed a functional model to help LOCOG fully understand the security personnel (private security and stewarding) requirements across the 34 Olympic venues over the course of the 2012 Games.

LOCOG’s challenge

When venue planning was in its early stages, LOCOG’s objective was to establish the numbers of security staff that would be needed at Games-time, split by individual competition venue, by day and by hour.

A detailed picture of the staffing requirement was needed to help them understand the likely requirement from the UK private security industry.

Given the profile of London 2012 and the unique security considerations, LOCOG’s security planning team had to be certain that the information was both accurate and comprehensive.

What Deloitte did

A Security & Privacy specialist from Deloitte’s Enterprise Risk Services division worked with the British Security Industry Authority and representatives from leading private security companies to define the necessary security provisions for the London Games. Deloitte also worked with LOCOG’s internal functions to establish the required information with minimal disruption.

The product we developed was an integrated staffing model which enabled LOCOG to assess its resource requirements at a glance.  Deloitte took a best practice model and gave it additional functionality to take account of venue capacities, the volume and duration of vehicle and people searches, and queue times based on anticipated spectator numbers.

The model, which incorporates the provisional Olympic competition schedule, identified a maximum security requirement of 5,000 people at the peak hour on the peak day of the Games, when 24 sports will be taking place simultaneously in 28 venues across the country.

Our work also helped identify the extent of the shortfall of trained personnel capable of working in a security function. This has in turn assisted LOCOG in its work to resolve the shortfall, through an ‘Inspired by London 2012’ project entitled ‘Bridging The Gap’, which will be launched shortly.

Impact on the Games

The findings of this project have been extensively utilised by LOCOG’s security team.

At a strategic level, the risk of underestimating the requirement could lead to the technology and police support having to be increased to boost the visible security presence, which would have clear financial implications.

At a practical level, fewer security staff and stewards would for example lead to longer queue times at competition venues, not only affecting the customer experience but also damaging the reputation of LOCOG as an organisation and London as the host city.

A number of important stakeholders were involved in the development of this project, from LOCOG’s security team and the police to the private security industry. Each party is critical to the delivery of the Games and the findings of this project will be invaluable in the security planning for London 2012 and potentially future major events.