What is an Advance? It is a security survey of all parts of an itinerary to include hotels, restaurants, vehicles, other transport, hospitals, doctors, & routes of travel. The Advance is done by Executive / Close Protection Officers (CPO) prior to the arrival of the protective detail at each city or country that the protectee visits. Advances are the most important aspect of Executive / Close Protection.
The Advance is designed to ensure the protectee’s visit and daily schedule proceeds in a secure and smooth manner. The first concern of the CPO is that the protectee is safe, as a result the Advance imagines all possible threats to the protectee and includes methodical site surveys, meticulous planning and procedures and a game plan to address such threats were they to materialize.
Advance work can be very complex, and a high level of training and experience is required.
Below is a checklist of areas that must be considered as part of an Advance:
- Pre-departure preparations
- Route Surveys
- Setting up a 24/7 command centre
- Chauffeur responsibilities & guidelines
- Vehicles & vehicle equipment
- Hotels
- Private and Corporate Aircraft
- Airport arrivals and departures surveys
- Arrival sites at the city of visit
- Intelligence reports
- Threat Assessment
- Protectee Biographical Data and Risk Survey
- Preliminary Telephone Contacts
- Travel contact information
- International Travel plans
- Building surveys
- Restaurant surveys
- Maritime survey
- Bomb threats and procedures
- Handling mail and packages
- Weapons of mass destruction response
- Technical countermeasures sweep
- Hospital survey
- Medical and Police response
- First Aid
- Public Appearances
- Crisis management plan
The amount of time that can and should be spent on each Advance depends on many things and include the external and internal threat level, relative stability and crime level of the area, budget, etc. On some international protection assignments, the Close Protection Officer should be in the ground several days before the arrival of the protectee.
Many times, this is not possible, and advances are done 1 day ahead of the client as they move from location to location while still maintaining security on the client. In this case, when the client was in a secure location, the close protection team left to do the advances on the remaining itinerary for the rest of the event. Clustering advances by location and not chronological timing allows the team to be more efficient.
If it is not possible to do an in-depth ‘advance’ ahead of time, some important work can also be done in the 5-10 minutes before the protectee arrives. In these types of Advances, the CPO must prioritize what they must need to know in a short time: the entrance and exits, location of the rest rooms, meeting locations, identification of a safe room, and nearest hospital.
Another important component in the advance is adding a medical response by the CPO. They must know where the best trauma centres are and how to get to those locations. In addition, if the protectee has a medical issue the CPO may want to arrange VIP treatment with a pre-established doctor should there be a medical incident while traveling. All Close Protection Officers must be CPR, First Aid, & AED certified, and some are even Emergency Medical Technicians. A medical kit should be always on the protection detail.
This is a short overview of Advances which we consider to be the most important area in Close Protection work.
