Owners eye security during convention

Real Estate Weekly, August 18, 2004 by Daniel Geiger

If the recent threats against the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp building weren't enough, the impending arrival of the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden has thrust building owners and managers into a state of frenzied preparation for a possible terrorist attack, an out-of-control demonstration or a power failure. While increased security, especially in buildings within the vicinity of the convention, has been an important feature of such preparation, coordination and communication between city and governmental agencies and building owners and managers has been an essential and often drilled provision for responding to the various possible emergency scenarios.

Situated in Brooklyn, the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is the central nerve of citywide communication for the convention and will house desks for both private organizations like REBNY and BOMA and city departments like the FDNY, NYPD and US Secret Service--which has jurisdiction over security for the event. Simulations of everything from a power brownout to the explosion of car bombs have been carried out by the Secret Service in an attempt to test and hone the effectiveness of the city's response.

"We're going through the gamut of possible events," said BOMA/NY executive director Roberta McGowan. "These kinds of drills solidify in everyone's minds what we need to do in case of a real emergency. It also shows how well our existing lines of communication are functioning."

OEM will also allow for unprecedented cooperation.

"Let's say there is a brownout or a power outage," McGowan said. "I'll get the word from Con Edison and then I can go out to BOMA members and tell them to reduce their power consumption in their building."

Many prominent financial firms--especially wary because of the Al Qaeda's publicized intent to attack economic targets--are conducting preparation within their executive ranks similar to OEM's.

"In terms of crisis management we've begun creating mock scenarios for our executives and key decision makers and talk through the incident," said Goldman Sachs vice president Mark A. D'Arcy at a recent Bond Market Association meeting. "We've also sprung live exercises on our senior management. This flexes the muscles."

"We're big believers in muscle memory. You can build plans and call trees and put plans in place, it's also extremely valuable to ingrain this in the responsible people by actually carrying out the scenario. That way it gets better ingrained."

Speaking at the same Bond Market Association meeting, Deutsche Bank managing director Roseann McSorley stressed the importance for firms to institute a split operations model so that in case of a disrupting situation, business continuity can be preserved.

"We've already been working on a split operations model and we've just taken that and put it into practice," McSorley said. "In response to an actual incident, the life raft you have is who to call and where to go. That's all you need."

Although OEM's structure and performance reflects innovation in the area of response and emergency management, good old security guards who walk the beat and man building lobbies are undoubtedly still important in preventing an attack. Even when not in force, the illusion of protection they create might be enough to discourage potential perpetrators.