Site Security

William H. Gordon Associates, Inc. (Gordon) Site Security Group’s mission is to address the security and operational needs of public and private facilities, while maintaining their sense of openness and accessibility. To accomplish this, Gordon has developed a unique approach to security planning called Integrated Secure and Sustainable Design (ISSD), which utilizes Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles to integrate traditional physical security measures and community policing protocols with operational objectives and sustainability goals for the facility’s exterior and interior spaces. This approach advances the objectives for the utilization of CPTED as mandated within the Interagency Security Committee’s (ISC) Design Criteria, the Public Buildings Service Facilities Standards (GSA), and the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG).

Gordon’s multi-disciplinary professional consulting team of security and law enforcement professionals, CPTED specialists, and LEED AP engineers and landscape architects provide innovative cost effective site and security solutions by focusing on the positive use of space and natural elements to develop a desirable and functional environment for the intended users, while creating difficult and problematic conditions for the criminal element.

What makes Gordon’s approach unique?

Gordon’s approach promotes proactive security planning at the earliest stages of program development through an integrated process that considers the operational, sustainable, and design requirements for a facility. Key aspects of this integrated process include:

• The utilization of a customized discovery program during a formal stakeholder conference to clearly establish the objectives of all parties with a focus on the common parameters and opportunities associated with security, operations, and sustainability.
  
  
• The identification of specific facility programming recommendations for the conceptual design utilizing CPTED based analysis tools. Included will be recommendations on the integration of LEED/Sustainability measures with security objectives for existing or new facilities. Recommendations achieve significant cost savings as opposed to facilities retrofitted for security during the design/construction phase.
  
  
• The identification of opportunities to reduce the needs associated with security personnel and equipment thus lowering the long-term costs of facility management, maintenance, and equipment replacement.
  
  
• A CPTED based security assessment may be provided to include specific recommendations to address security and / or sustainability concerns for incorporation into future facility planning or operational updates.

A key aspect of security planning is the management of fear – real or perceived, since perceived fear becomes reality to those we seek to protect.
             
“It takes courage, conviction, and a visionary plan to say that in our time buildings are not fortresses. An integrated approach results in planning from a base of POWER, not one of FEAR.”