Security in Initial Phase

Staff -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 8/1/2005

When it comes to homeland security projects, most infrastructure owners are employing design firms to assess threats and vulnerabilities to their facilities instead of designing and building physical security improvements.

So says Homeland Security Opportunities for Design & Construction Firms, a new market research report from design-industry management consulting firm ZweigWhite, Natick, Mass.

When it comes to security projects, the report finds that owners, for the most part, are still in the preparation stage, procuring risk assessments to help them prepare for possible terrorist attacks. This is expected to change over the next few years, though, as the market moves into the prevention phase and more opportunities arise to meet the facility-hardening recommendations of the assessments.

The report also finds that while opportunities for federal work still dominate the market, it will eventually be up to private industry to drive growth; it owns 85% of the nation's infrastructure, making it the critical factor in determining whether overall homeland security work will grow in the long term.