First Security has appointed Steve Townson to the role of Senior Training Manager. Since the appointment, his role has been to assess the training processes and practices in place at First, and to implement additional courses and his own bespoke training packages, in order to offer comprehensive training in all areas, both internally, to First Security customers and to external third party clients.
Steve is extremely well-qualified for the role, having spent 18 years in training and development for the Armed Forces. Subsequently he has worked extensively in loss prevention and training for the security industry, latterly as Training and Control Centre Manager for Europe, the Middle East and East Africa, at Credit Suisse Corporate Management.
When First Security took over the manned guarding contract for Credit Suisse, they were keen to retain Steve, who was responsible for development of the entire team of 76 officers - through Steve's efforts all 76 obtained the Professional Security Officer award; further 26 of these officers achieved the level 3 Advanced Security officer with distinction. Steve was promoted into the HR department in a senior training and development role for First Security in September 2006.
Commenting on his appointment, Steve said: "I am delighted to be working in this head office position and, since my appointment, I have conducted a full analysis of all the training activities of First Security and made significant improvements to the training interventions offered both internally and externally, and completely redesigned the training provision across the company."
"Part of this process of improvement called for designing bespoke packages to fill the gaps in First Security training provision such as introducing Vehicle and Personnel Searching and Chemical and Biological Threat Management, and developing our external training products such as the customer service focused SMILE package. Furthermore, we have now developed the site-specific Added Value packages and can now offer these to our clients. Another milestone was in achieving the SIA accreditation, as one of the few approved training centres for Licensed CCTV training in the UK, at Caledonian House in London."
"A great deal of progress has been made already and there will soon be a new brochure encompassing all the training packages we offer. My aim over the next two to five years is for First Security to become a training school of excellence, not just internally but for the security sector at large, and we are certainly well on the way there."
As well as the above, Steve is heavily involved in the security industry training and qualifications activities such as the CCTV Consultation Group, Advanced level 3 qualification expert group, Sector expert group and the new security practitioner qualification.
In recognition of his drive and commitment to the acquisition of new skills and competencies, Steve himself will receive an award from Interserve in May this year.
