Soft or Hard; What kind of target is your facility?
When most people think about security, they tend to think of security officers, metal detectors and video cameras. True, these are all important elements of facility security, the best security plans start long before these elements are installed, and well before ground breaking. They begin on the drawing board, as designers and clients come together to sketch out buildings able to withstand a wide variety of threats, ranging from physical man made attacks and intrusion, to natural disasters and cyber security concerns.
As one of Thailand’s leading Architectural and Engineering firms, specializing in industrial design, we have helped many clients fulfill a wide variety of security concerns, from the everyday to the top-secret. The vast majority of our clients are simply seeking to provide a safe, comfortable workplace, because after all, who doesn’t want to feel secure when they’re at work or on vacation. For other clients it’s a primary concern that lies at the heart of every design decision. So when the United States Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand contacted us for a new security upgrade design, we were both honored and excited to help. For US facilities abroad, and even at home in the States, security is of paramount importance. They are responsible for sensitive data and critical operations that must be protected from both manmade and natural threats. State Department buildings are more than just structures; they are targets, living under the constant shadow of a bulls-eye. In every case abroad, the US Bureau of Overseas Building Operations (OBO) employ incredibly solid security design principles that can be an exceptionally potent defense mechanism. But you don’t have to have a government facility to benefit from a few simple design strategies to enhance your building’s security.
Industrial and Campus buildings – General Best Practices Whether through minor design decisions, such as sight lines or lighting, or larger more detailed undertakings, such as sealing rooms and buildings from physical or digital attack, a building’s design schematic can be its first line of defense against a wide range of potential threats, ranging from petty crime and theft to bioterrorism. Specific threats will differ based on a facility’s function and location, and as full service designers we always work with owners to analyze, prioritize, and fully accommodate a project’s particular needs. However, there are a number of general best practices that can greatly improve a facility’s overall security by subconsciously encouraging safe usage and minimizing potential internal or external threats.
When outlining your security plans, the design psychology is just as important as its tangible attributes, if not more so. The built up environment can significantly affect people’s thought patterns and behavior. Often subconsciously, building occupants and visitors respond to environmental cues that encourage particular behaviors and discourage potentially harmful tendencies. Lighting is perhaps the most common example. Well lit, open areas tend to deter crime, while darker, enclosed spaces can encourage it. Other design factors can have similarly strategic effects on behavior, and make up the bulk of the larger discipline of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Primary goals include using the built environment to improve visibility, control access, and increase a facility’s over all resilience. Visibility
Promoting visibility, or even creating the illusion of visibility, helps deter crime and foster a sense of security among facility users. As designers focusing on target hardening we abide by a “neighborhood watch” mentality, both within and outside of the building, and design from this principle, allowing security staff and building occupants to monitor potential threats. One example, using straight, unobstructed sight lines with no blind spots or corners eliminates potential hiding places, and creates spaces that can be easily surveyed. Curves, unnecessary alcoves, and other obstructions should be kept to a minimum in highly-trafficked areas. Landscaping should minimize hiding places and avoid plantings and bushes taller than an average person. To encourage surveillance among building personnel, windows and other openings should allow for easy viewing of busy areas, as well as of street activity outside. For example, including ample windows in highly-trafficked spaces, such as building offices and lobbies, allows occupants to clearly see activity on the street and identify potential threats before they arrive. Additionally, orienting offices to face major corridors encourages occupants to take note of their surroundings and can facilitate early threat detection.Each of these design strategies create safer spaces with a sense of openness and visibility that can act as a psychological deterrent against a number of potential threats. These spaces also manifest a sense of awareness and accountability, as building occupants can become watchmen of sorts, able to quickly spot any problems and provide important information to security personnel.
Accessibility
The design of open, visible spaces should be carefully balanced with measures controlling and restricting building access, to ensure that the open spaces themselves do not increase the risk for potential threats. The path finding strategies built into a project are key to achieving this goal. Signs and other markers should guide all visitors to a well demarcated central area upon entering the building, with minimal opportunity to disperse into other rooms. This makes it easier for on-site security personnel to monitor incoming visitors and identify potential threats. Lighting, decorations and other interior design elements should subconsciously enforce this direction by emphasizing spaces where designers most wish to draw the eye and direct visitor’s travel within the facility.Aside from pedestrian access, secure designs should also limit vehicle access and, to whatever extent possible, remove a building from the radius of external threats. For example, an exterior perimeter, even one simply demarcated by concrete traffic posts or planters, will prevent vehicles from directly approaching a facility, and distance it from any accidents, explosions or other threats that might occur on nearby. Other external features, such as highly visible plazas and courtyards are also useful as buffer zones.
Resilience
In addition to focusing on preventing threats, secure building designs should include well designed mechanisms to improve resilience if and when such threats become a reality. A building’s resilience is integral to its security, and as designers Archens can increase resilience by creating spaces that proactively adapt to unexpected situations. In Thailand’s many flood prone areas, for example, elevating crucial functions like a factory’s production line or an office building’s IT nerve center can help preserve operations even as waters rise. Additional safeguards include reinforcing connectors and other structural elements to withstand extreme loads, enhancing insulation to guard against utility failures and installing backup power sources and redundant systems to provide insurance in an emergency.
High-Security Facilities – Designing Hardened Defenses
While no one wants to see their building damaged in the event of a disaster, there are certain facilities where loss of function can be far worse than others having dire ramifications for everyone involved. These high-security facilities should take into account the best practices mentioned above while also providing increased protection to safeguard mission-critical operations and highly-sensitive information. Data centers are a good example of facilities needing specialized protection. These facilities warehouse tremendous amounts of information, typically affecting networks far beyond their physical location. Imagine, for example, if a national hospital network’s central data facility went offline during a tornado. If you were a patient in any one of that network’s hospitals, your medical history, prescriptions, MRI results or CT scans could vanish, damaged by a weather event that you likely did not even know was occurring. Multiply that loss by thousands of patients around the country, and you have a terrible headache on your hands. To prevent such losses, data centers and other mission-critical facilities should be designed with physical safeguards far exceeding those of a typical building. As one data center client put it, we must design facilities that will remain online even when Buicks are flying through the air. Several factors can help designers achieve that charge.
Location –High-security data centers should be placed in an inconspicuous location, remote from other buildings and outside of city centers or transportation hubs. Additionally, data centers should be located in a different city from the primary operators that they serve, to minimize the risk of both facilities being under duress simultaneously.
Exterior Construction–Though designers love to create visually striking buildings, it is wise to refrain from that tendency when working on this type of high-security facility. Data centers should be nondescript, better suited to deflecting attention than to attracting it. Windows should be kept to a minimum and walls should be thick, reinforced with concrete or steel.
Facility Layout–Crucial operations should be located at the center of the building, with non-crucial and administrative functions creating a perimeter shield.
Similar precautions apply to facilities housing sensitive information, though such facilities cannot always be hidden away in a remote location. Often, seemingly ordinary office buildings must, through less visible methods, ensure both physical and cybersecurity. These can be categorized as Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF), a subset of building design with extremely high security standards and strict certification requirements. Within SCIF facilities, particular areas where sensitive information are stored or discussed is sectioned off and protected with numerous, layered features, including aluminum-lined walls, sound-masking systems and electronic or radio frequency shields.
Whether a building is a SCIF facility or simply a normal factory or office building, security is always be a top priority for Archens Design & Consultants Co, from the drawing board onwards. Good design allows the building itself to take on an active role in ensuring occupant safety, by subconsciously directing users, emphasizing safe behavior and deterring outside threats. The severity and cost of such precautions varies, but with each step taken, our buildings, our cities and crucially, our people can become a bit safer, a bit more secure behind the defenses of a smart built environment.
