Terrorism prevention, preparedness, and response in built facilities

Abstract

PurposeTo explore the risk management, crisis management and business continuity management (BCM) practices of facilities managers responsible for a range of major public and private buildings in Sydney, Australia.Design/methodology/approachThe research method involved a survey of facilities managers responsible for the management of 27 potentially vulnerable buildings in the Sydney metropolitan area, Australia.FindingsThe results suggest that facilities managers under estimate the vulnerability of buildings to terrorist attack, may have a misconception about likely targets and may be unprepared for such an eventuality.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings are restricted to the restricted sample of facilities managers interviewed who were responsible for a range of major public and private buildings in Sydney, Australia.Practical implicationsHighlights the security responsibilities of facilities managers in the new security environment and practical measures which can be taken to improve terrorism preparedness, recovery and response.Originality/valueBuildings, infrastructure and public spaces have increasingly become the focus of terrorist attacks. Yet little is known about the level of preparedness to deal with this eventuality. This paper presents a critique of the literature on terrorism applied to building facilities, integrating the literature on crisis management, BCM and risk management.

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“…Leadership plays a vital role in organizations by developing and enabling organizational competencies (Murphy and Johnson, 2016;Pendleton and Furnham, 2016). Crisis leadership is increasingly challenging because of terrorism and natural and human disasters (Dos Santos et al, 2016;Khiun Then and Loosemore, 2006;Warren, 2010). Crisis leadership has mainly been addressed from a pragmatic and functional perspective rather than long-term leadership perspectives (Muffet-Willett and Kruse, 2009).…”

“…The leaders' sense of urgency may be affected by factors like their personal risk perceptions, which can be flawed in the case of some new risks, e.g. terrorism (Khiun Then and Loosemore, 2006). Thus, this is not a standalone factor.…”

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