TRAINING

Training of both client and third party personnel has come to be an integral part of many ‘capacity building’ endeavours and increasingly has become a crucial element of any ‘Offset’ strategy. Like many of the areas of consultancy discussed above, training in all our service sectors is designed to provide a legacy of expertise amongst consumer personnel that can be adapted and applied to evolving situations by them post-contract. Specific training packages already delivered on this basis include those listed below.

Security Related Training

Gordian provide broad tactical level security training by working with our partners at RJA Security (www.rjasecurity.com). RJA have substantial experience in delivering ‘on-the-ground’ training to security personnel involved in securing large scale static sites. Gordian add additional dimensions to this capability by enhancing local management capabilities using the skill sets above to deliver taught modules supported by brief periods of mentoring and further personal development in situ, so that they are better able to take advantage of the expertise imparted to their staff.

More specialist and role specific training, such as for covert surveillance teams, can be delivered by individual arrangement.

In addition, Gordian add a top tier of training, based on our experience of delivering close protection and enhanced (but discrete) security regimes for British governmental leaders in various parts of the world. This is aimed at relatively small numbers of the most capable personnel to be trained in delivering different security packages, which they would be taught to develop and adapt for themselves as threats and risks change, and includes:

1. Close Protection training.

2. Discrete and low resource Close Protection training. This would complement the ‘hard skills’ (the physical and tactical elements required by close protection officers) included at I above, developing them and then adding a tier of ‘soft skills’ such as ‘elasticity’ paradigms and information, diary and route management, and well as engaging with principals to ensure their expectations are met and their lifestyle only minimally restricted.

3. Covert close protection, including both its management, integration with overt protection and purpose/suitability.

4. Personnel security, aimed at circumstances where personal protection is unnecessary but environmental risks nonetheless exist. Training is geared towards the personnel themselves, ‘Overseas Security Managers’, Health and Safety managers, or their equivalents.

5. Conflict management, adapted for the legal framework in which personnel are operating, and geared to goal achievement whilst minimising frictions, rather than ‘winning’ confrontations. This skill set (to simplify somewhat) has proven useful to both civilian staff needing to enhance their forcefulness, and ex-military staff needing to reduce it, or to develop a deferential or friendly manner while being robust. Skills are based on the expectation of having to provide discrete security in a civilian environment, whether at home or abroad.

6. Defensive driving and VIP driving, together with the use of vehicles within a security package.

7. The use of covert surveillance encompassing input on both when it is appropriate, linkage to other intelligence streams, and tactical delivery issues including static, vehicle and foot follow techniques and planning for such operations. These would invariably be for governmental clients. Awareness of Counter-intelligence and anti-surveillance techniques for particular client groups.

8. Travel safety training for staff travelling to countries with an increased profile of crime, security or low infrastructure challenges.

Information Related Training

All of the information related skills outlined under capacity building and consultancy can be delivered as a training package. In addition the following particular skill sets can be provided as taught modules:

1. Collection methodologies including open source research, human intelligence recruitment, handling and controller courses, technical collection methods (in accordance with local technology capabilities and any HMG agreements or directives that are extant). Collection plans and the use of an integrated/cueing approach.

2. Structured Analytic Techniques (SAT’s) Methods Course, a set of tools used by Government and private information gathering organisations for the initial processing and ordering of data. This is particularly useful where there is a substantial amount of information, numerous intelligence streams, or contradictory data to be incorporated, so that the ‘signal’ can be discerned amidst the ‘noise’.

3. Analysis Training including the use of validity/reliability of assessment tools, understanding analytic pathologies such as ‘mirror imaging’ and ‘groupthink’, the policy/analysis interface and the respective advantages and weaknesses of different models, covering initial to senior roles and responsibilities.

4. Dissemination structures, information security, management and control, the ‘ownership’ of intelligence reporting and its implication for utilisation. Presentation methods for different audiences at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

5. The proper integration of information obtained through the use of covert intelligence gathering.