If you have a building you want to protect with the right physical security and bulletproofing products, you probably have questions about the best options at your disposal. The point of building physical security is to make it more secure for the people who use it. Whether it’s a store, business office, community center, hospital, school, stadium, bank, or government building, the place to start is with a thorough site assessment with relevant stakeholders to identify areas of vulnerability. Each area could benefit from the right kind of protective barrier to increase safety and security. In this blog article, we’ll tackle some of the top questions about building physical security and bulletproofing.
Protective Planning and Physical Building Security Solutions
As you read the various questions and answers provided in this blog article, keep in mind that Creative Industries has been providing physical building security and bulletproofing solutions to a wide range of customers since 1970. With the right safety planning and protective products, you can achieve a greater level of security, safety, and peace of mind in your building, in spite of what you see about gun violence all too frequently in the news. We are committed to doing everything we can to meet your safety and security needs, including designing and making customized products to fit your unique requirements. Call us at 800-776-2068 to get the conversation started!
What Can We Do for Greater Building Security?
Any business, office, community centers, churches or other buildings have to consider the potential threat of gun violence. Shooting incidents in buildings of all types have reached epidemic levels around the country. Making your business more secure typically involves minimizing the number of entrances through which people can enter a building, staffing that entrance with trained personnel who can help control access to the building, and incorporating various bulletproofing products that provide protection against an attacker wielding a firearm such as a rifle or handgun.
How Do We Plan for Potential Active Shooter Incidents?
If your company or organization hasn’t updated its emergency response plans to include active shooter incidents, now is the time to do that. Your existing emergency plan is a good place to start, as it’s easier to modify an existing plan than start from scratch to create something new for gun violence. The Department of Homeland Security has a good introduction to this topic with its Active Shooter: How to Respond document. It provides guidance for what to do when your building is under attack, as well as suggestions for how to plan and train staff for active shooter situations.
What Kinds of Bulletproof Products are Available?
The most common action to take is replacing regular glass in key areas with bulletproof or bullet-resistant glass. If the building you want to better protect is going to be undergoing renovations, that’s a natural, ideal time to incorporate bulletproof products into the work. At Creative Industries, we offer a variety of bulletproof window and glass products. We can also design and make any customized products to meet your security needs. We have a variety of other products that might interest you. You can also find vendors who offer bulletproof doors and even desks to offer great protection to the people in your building.
Can We Still Maintain an Aesthetic Appearance with Bulletproof Products?
Yes, you can! You shouldn’t have to sacrifice aesthetic appeal in order to achieve greater security from shooting incidents (which more and more often seem to be hate crimes). Creative industries will work with you in a collaborative process to study and address your building’s vulnerabilities while still maintaining the aesthetic look you desire. A bulletproof barrier does not have to be ugly!
How Much Bulletproofing Should We Tackle at Once?
The answer to this question will depend on the budget you have available for increasing building physical security. As mentioned previously, if your building will be undergoing renovations any time soon, take advantage of that to do as much bulletproofing and security upgrades as possible. But if you need to space the work out over time and do it in chunks, start with the most critical rooms and building vulnerabilities first and then work your way down the list as you are able.
How Can We Identify the Building Vulnerabilities We Need to Address?
Earlier in this blog article we mentioned the need for a thorough site assessment. This process is often called various things, such as a Physical Security Audit, Physical Security Risk Assessment, Building Security Audit, and so on, although many times this terminology is specifically used in relation to protecting computer systems and servers. This kind of full audit covers a lot more than vulnerabilities to potential active shooter incidents to include a wide range of physical security threats that could harm the people and assets in the building, as well as the building itself. A great (and extensive) Introduction to Physical Security has been assembled by the Center for Development of Security Excellence for students studying physical security. To do this piece of the puzzle right, you should seriously consider hiring a qualified security consultant.
How Can I Tell If My Staff Feel Safe or Not?
In the broadest sense, everyone is more concerned about the safety of buildings in which the spend time, but to really find out how your people are feeling, you could have them take a Security Perception Survey. This doesn’t need to be a huge undertaking, just asking a series of questions to reveal how safe your people feel in the building. You can learn a lot from these surveys in terms of identifying security issues you might otherwise have missed. Here’s an example of this kind of survey geared towards employers that could be adapted to any kind of organization: Security Perception Survey on SecurityInfoWatch.com.
We hope you found this page of top building physical security and bulletproofing questions helpful as you consider how your company, organization, or government agency will respond to the rising threat of gun violence and active shooter incidents. If at any time you want to discuss your concerns or bulletproofing needs, please feel free to get in touch with us. We’re here to help you achieve better levels of building safety for everyone’s sake! Call Creative Industries at 800-776-2068 or fill out the web form on the Contact page of our website.