By Michael Dorn and Chris Dorn
Safe Havens International
This article is brought to you by The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI). Visit their website: www.riskinstitute.org
Properly conducted tactical site surveys can improve teaching and learning in schools while reducing crime and violence, enhancing antiterrorism efforts, reducing worker’s compensation claims, cutting maintenance costs and minimizing civil liability. In recent years, thousands of school and public safety officials have learned how to coordinate their own tactical site surveys and as a result saved their organizations millions while reducing risk and saving lives.
According to Ted C. Fishman in his book China Inc., the People’s Republic of China is graduating 350,000 engineers each year. In The World is Flat, author Thomas L. Friedman makes a compelling case that the global movement of jobs in recent decades is nothing short of profound. Both authors feel that American education, from K-12 schools to technical colleges and our finest universities, must maximize their efforts to help America retain its bountiful way of life in the coming decades. Not since World War II have the schools of our nation faced such immense challenges where quite literally the future of our nation rests on our educational system. Common sense would lead most people to the conclusion that a school that is not safe and orderly is not as effective a place for children to learn as it could be. One of the best ways to help schools maximize their safety efforts is performing annual tactical site surveys of their facilities.
THE PROCESS
The tactical site survey is a multidisciplinary hazard and vulnerability assessment carried out as part of the emergency pre-planning process. During a walk-through tour of the facility, each room as well as the surrounding grounds and immediate neighborhood is evaluated. The process involves a team of school and public safety officials using a standardized checklist to note findings and recommendations. When combined with student, staff and parent surveys, a review of reported incident data and the community hazard assessment report, a thorough safety evaluation of the school can be achieved. This process is also among the most effective means to determine which types of security and safety equipment, technology, policies and practices should be utilized at the school or support facility.
Every K-12 school should be evaluated by a properly coordinated tactical site survey team at least once each year. A school that has not been surveyed within the past year is simply not as safe as it could and should be. More comprehensive than a fire inspection, crime prevention through environmental design assessment or simple security audit, the tactical site survey is a multidisciplinary assessment of the facility as well as the grounds, parking areas and even the surrounding neighborhood. Tactical site surveys should also be conducted at support facilities, athletic facilities and any other facility operated by a school system. Tactical site surveys are at least as important if not even more critical for private schools for liability reasons. Since private schools do not have the benefit of qualified immunity most public school systems enjoy, they are far easier to successfully sue following safety incidents. This proactive process is designed to find and correct common hazards that typically result in safety incidents when they are not detected. The tactical site survey is also a crisis preplanning activity where critical information about the facility is noted and recorded for use by public safety response officials.
Traditionally, public and private schools have relied upon fire department personnel to conduct fire prevention inspections and security consultants to coordinate security or safety “audits” of their facilities. While a fire marshal can be very helpful in finding fire hazards and a qualified safety consultant can often pinpoint vulnerabilities relating to security issues, these approaches are one dimensional and are not as valuable as the comprehensive all hazards assessment approach of the tactical site survey combined with the annual fire inspection by fire service professionals. Utilizing local experts such as fire, law enforcement, public health as well as emergency management personnel to assist in the surveys will dramatically impact the level of safety and emergency preparedness on a campus while affecting lasting change. Unlike stand alone inspections, a properly coordinated tactical site survey can help create a climate where staff can more effectively help students achieve their full potential in terms of academic success.
There are other benefits of internalizing this life saving process. When a truly qualified consultant or firm is hired to coordinate tactical site surveys, they will indeed find numerous safety, security and emergency management concerns. However, when the survey is coordinated by a consultant rather than a local team, the level of safety within the organizational culture does not change significantly. By involving staff and other local personnel in the tactical site survey process, a lasting change in the way people view their workplace can be achieved, and there is an added benefit of increased familiarity with individuals who may be part of the emergency planning process or response efforts in the future.
The most cost effective way to utilize qualified consultants is to have them train your staff to coordinate tactical site surveys and to present awareness presentations to other staff. School safety consultants typically charge between $2,000 and $15,000 per building to conduct safety audits, and we find that too often cost does not correlate with the quality of the work or the qualifications of the consultants performing the work. Training of an internal team can be completed for $6,000 to $25,000 depending on the number of trainees and instructors required. By internalizing the tactical site survey process and moving beyond the rudimentary security audit approach, lasting, positive and significant cultural change can occur. For less than most districts would pay to have a private contractor conduct safety audits for one year, the organization can develop the capacity to conduct tactical site surveys year after year with no recurring cost.
As one example, the Tucson Unified School District utilized a United States Department of Education Crisis Planning Grant to bring in an expert to train area school and public safety officials in the tactical site survey process. This was intended as a way to augment the Risk Management Department’s annual safety inspections, but this relatively inexpensive effort helped to change the way building-based personnel viewed safety hazards, and as a result hazards are corrected as they appear instead of being glossed over and becoming part of the landscape of the school.
TIME MANAGEMENT ISSUE
A school superintendent does not have the time to ignore this process. Each year tragic situations that could have been averted through the tactical site survey process occur around the nation. These situations often result in a massive drain on human and fiscal resources and even more tragically, death or serious injury to victims. The administrative time spent on a single major safety incident can be greater than the time spent coordinating annual tactical site surveys for decades.
As an example, on one tactical site survey coordinated by the School Safety Project of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency team members found thirteen cylinders containing Freon in a boiler room next to a rickety sheet metal shelf containing four gallons of chemicals that, when mixed with Freon, would create deadly phosgene gas similar to the gas used in World War I. Just outside the boiler room was the air intake for an academic building with an average occupancy of more than 400 people. The county emergency management director participating in the tactical site survey indicated that an evacuation radius of three miles would be necessary should an accidental mixture ever occur. While the components might easily have remained for years without mixing, the impact on the institution of a hazardous materials incident of that magnitude could have lasting and catastrophic implications for the institution and of course, the victims.
GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICE
It is also fiscally irresponsible to skip this part of the planning process. Once again, the time and cost of annually performing site surveys falls far below the potential cost of an actual crisis, even on the low end. One rural Oklahoma school district that had a shooting spent more than $7 million in the first thirty days after the incident, which was one-third of their annual $21 million budget. Helping those with fiscal responsibility grasp the magnitude of some safety incidents can help them understand the need to devote time and budget to safety. Pan Am, at one time the world’s largest commercial airline, ceased to exist because of a single safety incident. It is bad business to ignore a threat that could potentially result in an unplanned expenditure so large.
TEAM MEMBER SELECTION
The tactical site survey process is powerful, yet relatively simple. A group of individuals from a variety of disciplines is brought together to conduct the assessment from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint. Ideally, area law enforcement, fire, emergency management, public health, risk management and insurance personnel can be brought in to assist internal personnel such as facilities, environmental health and safety, security, campus/hospital police and administrators. Other disciplines have also proven to be of great benefit. For example, I have found that school nurses spot a number of hazards that may be missed by other team members. Typically, the individual coordinating the tactical site survey will not be able to line up all of the disciplines listed above for all tactical site surveys that are to be conducted. The rule of thumb is to obtain the assistance of as many of the different individuals as possible. Three people will spot more hazards than one person and a six person team will spot more things than a team of three. While coordinating a tactical site survey training program in a large Nevada school district, a building principal pointed out that the group that toured his school found hundreds of things missed by an individual who had just coordinated a safety audit of the building by himself. One person is generally not going to spot what a diverse group notices even when they are talented. When an experienced consultant works a team through several buildings after a proper training program, the team can pick up a great deal of the consultant’s knowledge rather quickly. We have trained hundreds of safety consultants in this process and routinely hear feedback that they learned a great deal from this group process even when they had conducted many safety audits in the past.
Finding people who are dedicated, focused on the safety of the people they serve, and above all else team players can be one of the most important aspects of the tactical site survey process. By bringing experts of different disciplines together, a considerable amount of information can be obtained. For example, the fire official can not only point out fire code violations, but explain in person to people who actually work in the building why the violation is dangerous – this makes it much easier to obtain future compliance voluntarily. By having the various disciplines in the facility together, differences among various professional viewpoints can be ironed out. I have seen cases where police urged school officials to replace the locks on classroom doors to enable teachers to lock down more rapidly, only to have fire officials threaten to shut down the school if the locks were not removed because they violated local fire codes. By bringing the different disciplines to your facility together in one place, these types of costly mistakes can be easily avoided.
TACTICAL SITE SURVEY CHECKLIST
The tactical site survey checklist is simply a guide to help coordinate the tactical site survey. In general, the most serious safety concerns in buildings do not appear on anyone’s site survey checklist. While the checklist is a valuable tool to help guide the process and record findings, there is a tendency for people to get too focused on the checklist and miss obvious safety hazards. Members of the tactical site survey team should use a checklist while making sure they are focused on what they are seeing more than on filling out forms. For a free twenty page tactical site survey checklist and other tools to assist you in performing a tactical site survey, visit the free resources page at www.safehavensinternational.org. The National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (http://www.edfacilities.org/index.cfm) also has a large library of resources that may assist in the process.
RECORD KEEPING
There are two basic schools of thought on the records generated by the tactical site survey checklist. The first is to destroy the checklist in a set time frame as soon as suitable time has passed to allow corrective action to be taken. The rationale behind this approach is that an injury or death could occur after a hazard has been found and noted but for some reason has not yet been corrected. It is imperative that the destruction of documents be rigorously consistent if this approach is used. If this is not done, allegations will likely surface that some documents were destroyed to cover up evidence that the hazard was found and not fixed while others were kept on file. The second approach is to maintain the records for a set period of time, usually between two and four years. The benefit of this approach is that it provides tangible evidence in court that the organization exceeds government safety standards by proactively finding and fixing most safety hazards. Consult with legal counsel, risk management and/or your insurance company for guidance on the approach that may be best in your state.
ACCESS CONTROL AS A FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE
A series of highly publicized school shootings in the fall of the 2006-2007 school year heightened concerns about a gap that has existed in the safety of American K-12 schools for decades: effective access control procedures. While the public, influenced by sensationalist media reporting and exaggerated claims of a “new wave of ultra violence in our schools” perceive a suddenly heightened level of risk, there is no solid evidence of any new trend. In fact, major acts of school violence involving poor access control have been occurring for decades. Now, because of these highly publicized and tragic events, educators, students and parents are more concerned about access control than ever before. The tactical site survey process is an excellent opportunity to review and modify access control procedures and measures for schools. Here are a few examples of how individual schools have found tactical site surveys to be helpful in addressing access control issues.
Tennessee
During a tactical site survey in a rural school system in Tennessee, school officials expressed concern about a multi-million dollar facility renovation project. During the project school officials wanted to dramatically improve access control for three school facilities that are connected by covered walkways. Architects stated that enclosing the walkways to reduce access points down to one entryway per building would require millions of dollars in fire code updates. The site survey team determined that a system of decorative gating with metal gates, panic hardware and audible alarms at each existing access point could accomplish a similar level of security for a fraction of the cost.
Chicago
A rapidly growing private school faced with access control issues found during a tactical site survey that for a few thousand dollars, carefully selected and properly installed equipment combined with revised sign in procedures could increase the level of access control dramatically. School staff currently cannot see the front door to know who they are buzzing in, but a simple speaker system, camera and alteration of a window will allow staff to see who they are granting access to before they open the door remotely. Requiring visitors to produce photo identification to obtain a visitor badge after being checked against student contact information is a necessary step. Time-fade visitor badges will ensure that visitor badges cannot be reused after a certain number of hours, and the sign-in log will be kept secured behind the desk by staff. Awareness efforts will help staff understand the need to look for visitor badges on all visitors and the importance of keeping doors locked. Staff will also begin teaching with the classroom doors locked when students are in class. In addition a “problem door” that has been continually left open by staff, students and parents will be equipped with a panic bar system which incorporates an audible alarm and signage stating “Emergency exit only – alarm will sound if door is opened”.
Wisconsin
Administrators at a Wisconsin high school that recently averted a planned school shooting wanted to further enhance their access control measures. During the tactical site survey, it became apparent that the biggest vulnerability probably existed in the way the open campus concept was being utilized during the lunch period. The school’s administrative team had done a very good job of ensuring all exterior doors remained locked during the school day and even assigned a staff member to observe the front doors and admit authorized visitors by opening the door manually. After noting that it could be dangerous for the staff member to leave their radio on a desk while going to open the door, the site survey team recommended that the policy be changed to require the staff member to keep the radio on their person at all times. The group also recommended that a remote opening device be installed so the staff member would not have to walk across the lobby each time a visitor needed to be admitted. The biggest benefit of the site survey was the observation that students were able to gather in too many areas on and around campus during the open lunch. The team suggested that students be restricted to a smaller number of areas where they could be better supervised by available staff.
Michigan
During a tactical site survey training program, an elementary school with very good access control and supervision of students learned two simple ways to improve their access control system. The first involved a slight modification to a very good entry way design. The school’s principal had insisted that the architect design a passive controlled entryway where the front entrance doors could be left open, but a second set of interior entryway doors could be locked to force visitors to enter the main office to gain access to the rest of the school. The team recommended a simple set of remote unlocking devices on the door leading into the office and the door leading from the office lobby to the main area of the school. This will allow the staff member working the desk to admit those who do not appear to pose a threat to the office and allow them access to the school after checking their identification and verifying their authorization to be in the school.
Montana
During a tactical site survey train-the-trainer program at a middle school, the School Resource Officer pointed out that his office location in the basement of the multistory school did little to deter trespassers or intruders. The assistant principal identified a vacant storage closet with a large window that opened into a trophy case in the main lobby of the school. This was converted into an office for a few hundred dollars and now provides the officer with a clear view of the main entrance, the main office and two main hallways. It is fairly unlikely that an outside consultant would have realized that the storage closet was located behind the trophy case.
CONCLUSION
The tactical site survey process is a low-cost, indispensable tool that can help dramatically reduce the risk of death, injury, damage to property and disruption of services. School systems are increasingly internalizing the capacity to coordinate their own tactical site surveys to save money, increase efficiency and to maximize the benefits of the process. For those that feel that they have already done all they can to improve the academic environment in a school, the tactical site survey process is one of the best ways to do more to create and maintain excellence in education to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing world.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director and Chris Dorn is an Analyst for Safe Havens International Inc., the world’s foremost non-profit campus safety center. The Dorns have authored and coauthored more than 20 books on school safety and Safe Havens analysts have trained more than 1,500 tactical site survey instructors and have work experience in more than 25 countries. Michael and Chris can be reached via the Safe Havens web site at www.safehavensinternational.org.
In January 2006, PERI held a free online symposium to explore strategies for addressing violence in our nation’s schools. The program, entitled “Confronting Violence in Our Schools: Planning, Response, and Recovery,” offered practical advice for dealing with school violence — not just the high profile incidents that make headlines but the real issues of school violence that schools and communities face everyday.
The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI) is a nonprofit research organization that provides education and training resources on topics related to risk management and emergency management. PERI’s website, www.riskinstitute.org, offers free E-Training programs and a Publications, Tools, and Resources library with information on emergency planning and response, disaster recovery, school safety, workers’ compensation, and other key topics in risk management. PERI’s also maintains a national database of public sector liability and workers’ compensation claims data for benchmarking and performance measurement. The Data Exchange is a voluntary program that allows participating organizations to compare their liability and workers’ compensation losses with their peers and learn from other jurisdictions.
