Bruce McIndoe
With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games slated to begin this week, iJet Intelligent Risk Systems founder and president Bruce McIndoe highlighted the breadth of safety and security issues that corporations must consider as they plan events or send employees to the games and compared them with the risks of individual business travel. Following a session he moderated on this topic at the National Business Travel Association's annual convention here last week, McIndoe discussed with The Transnationaltopics including the top security issues at the Beijing Olympics. An excerpt follows.
What are your recommendations to travel managers about the Olympics?
The top nine risks that companies are going to face around the Olympics are fairly typical: accidents, food and water, the environment--health and air quality--so if people have breathing issues they need to take precautions due to the pollution. Others are: fire, transportation, theft, security services, terrorism/civil unrest and data protection. We're very concerned about the police. They have tens of thousands of brand-new recruits. We've already seen many examples just in the past few weeks where the recruits are heavy handed, young, hyped up and used strong-arm tactics. It's not so much that you're going to be a target--even though if you do something silly you could--but more collateral damage where these guys come in and strong arm the perpetrator and end up plowing down four to five other people in the process. Terrorism or civil unrest issues are always out there, but we would be surprised if there are any significant issues given the level of security that the Chinese have thrown at this.
What was the bottom line of the presentation you moderated with speakers from Accenture, Aramark and Marriott?
Using the Olympics as a backdrop, how do you look at event risk management? What does the full-spectrum threat assessment look like? You can't just look at security. You have to look at environment issues, you have to look at data protection, health issues, transportation--you have to look at all those dimensions. There are more areas of threat to an event. Even the speakers--for example, is Alan Greenspan a controversial speaker who may draw a threat to your event? Events are much more public. We're starting to educate companies that they need to have a system to evaluateall this. The speaker from Marriott talked about hotel risks; Aramark talked about food safety; and Mary Bastrentaz, senior director of global travel and events at Accenture, talked about how they evaluate meetings and rank them, and when a formal 'event management guide'--a formal document--versus a more informal plan is needed.
What safety and security issues are corporations most concerned about these days?
Travel managers are basically getting meetings and events dumped on them as part of strategic meetings initiatives or cost synergies. Of course, there's a risk management component to events that is related, but much different than travel risk management. We started about a year ago to talk about event risk management and the broadness of health and safety, legal and ethics, compliance and insurance and other issues. It's a much broader palette than with travel risk management.
Ideally, when should a company come to you when planning a meeting or event that might be volatile or high profile?
As soon as they're starting to look at locations, they should always look at what is the profile of that location. It's simple things; maybe there will be some other major event there or national election. It's basic due diligence that you don't walk into something that's difficult. Of course you want to look at crime and other issues. Just having that part of the initial process will make sure you don't have to retread or look for a new venue. Rio was one locale where a client went two years ago and was going back, but now it's gotten really ugly there because of crime. The environment can change quickly. The biggest issues we see globally are centered around food, water and energy. Those three, especially as they converge, are generating economic hardship and civil and social unrest, and those things can turn overnight. If a country like Mexico raises the cost of wheat, literally overnight you can get citizens starting to picket and blockading roads and burning tires. It's a very tough situation right now.
What is this new communication product you introduced last month, and how are your clients using it?
Worldcue Critical Contact allows two-way messaging between the company and the traveler. We do text to voice messaging, so you can type in a message, we call employee cell phones and the computer delivers the message. But, more importantly, you can ask for responses. 'Press one if you're OK, press two if you need assistance,' and it will tally that up. I can blast this out to 400 people and in five or 10 minutes get an all-green OK, or these three aren't responding. Pilot clients have used it to activate their internal emergency management teams, and they've been using it around events. Like in Bangalore when we had the bombings, they can quickly go out and check on everyone traveling in Bangalore and make sure they're all OK.