We as security consultants, often are tasked in planning complex security solutions- whether technologies or procedures, or manpower requirements. Most often, our planning will take into consideration all of those factors.
Before planning we do our research – risk assessments, client’s needs and requirements, local laws and regulations, budgets, physical layouts and constraints. There are a multitude of factors and data we need to analyze in order to provide the client with the best security solution possible.
So we have a professional plan with a detailed design of every piece of technology, comm methods, SOPs, and what not.
But when we get to the implementation phase, we have a big problem: How do we ensure that our plan is properly implemented?
This requires hands- on supervision during the installation phase. We are our client’s representatives, acting on their behalf as experts. We need to be out there with the persons implementing the system, those who are digging the holes in the ground for the camera poles, those that do the electrical wirings, those that mark the cables running into the servers, and those that setup the software.
Supervision can be done at various intervals, from a single day during physical set up- ensuring the contractor meets all requirements, to multiple visits in large scale projects, where a mistake or an error in implementation might have a huge impact on the project in terms of unfixable construction to affecting other components of the system.
We are the client's eyes in the field, ensuring that what we planned is actually what is implemented, and providing solutions if problems arise (as they usually do...)
Our responsibility as consultants and planners lays in assuring at every step of the project that the client gets a security system that is operational and effective in real life.