Singapore invests in integrating security guarding and technology In 2018, the Singaporean government decided that its security industry needed to transform. While funding, skills development and new regulation were needed, it identified changing security buyers’ behaviour for the better as the key challenge.
Even before the labour market challenges posed by COVID-19, Singapore’s security personnel sector was struggling to meet demand.
Security manpower grew at a rate of five percent per annum in the five years to 2018 – about double the growth rate of total employment in Singapore. With many of the country’s 47,000 active security officers already working long hours, the heightened security threat from terrorism and a boom in new buildings and facilities would see demand for services far outstrip supply. Faced with increasing demand for security services and a slowing pace of workforce growth, Singapore’s government launched an ambitious $10 million (over three years) plan to support initiatives to transform the industry, increase productivity and make job requirements less manpowerintensive. Led by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Security Industry Transformation Map (ITM) constituted a collective effort by industry associations, companies, unions, service buyers, security agencies and Government agencies to develop a vibrant, technologically advanced and competitive security industry delivering better security outcomes for Singapore. 40
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Changing security buyers’ behaviour In her 13 February 2018 speech to launch the Security ITM, Second Minister for Home Affairs and Second Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo set out the challenges that the ITM sought to address – and it makes for interesting reading: The first set of challenges have to do with buyers’ behaviours. Many buyers of security services still do not have the practice of conducting risk assessments before they call for tender. Typically, they use the same tender specifications that have been in place for years – kind of like the idea that if it isn’t broken, why fix it. Most often, they ask for the same number of guards as in the previous contract, not knowing whether it is optimal. They also tend to select vendors on cost only, rather than assess value, because if the contract spells out, you need X number of people, then, there is really nothing very much else to evaluate. How much does that number of people cost to us? So this is the consequence of how the contracts are specified. Not because the buyers are not keen to do anything else, they just took over what was given to
them. There is low awareness of new technologies and innovative solutions that can provide them with the same or even better security outcomes. But even if they were prepared to invest in technology, there may not be follow-through to redesign jobs, or as quite a few of the security providers have told us, they may not equip staff for effective implementation to use the equipment properly or to optimise its value. As a result, from the service providers’ perspective, there’s little incentive to differentiate their services, because the buyers are not asking for it. Several other industry practices also have unhelpful consequences. For example, contract durations tend to be short. That is to keep security service providers on its toes. This means that service providers have not much time to recoup investments, even if they are willing to bear the upfront costs. On a day-to-day basis, liquidated damages for a range of service lapses can be quite punitive. The relationship with buyers is quite transactional, with little room for building trust, on something as important as securing the premises. June/July 2022
