About
Daniel Smith. Principal Consultant.
Twenty-seven years in security, risk and crisis work, on four continents. Long enough to have made the decisions rather than read about them, and long enough to know which of them actually mattered.
What that adds up to is a narrow but useful specialism: the point where security, risk, crisis management, executive support, intelligence and business continuity all meet. Most people work one of those. The problems organisations actually have sit across several at once.
DS Advisory is the independent practice. One practitioner, fixed scope, fixed price. No account manager, no associate you have never met turning up instead.
The work
What is on the table at the end.
Most consultancy ends with a report. This ends with a set of documents the people doing the job can pick up and use on the day, without me in the room. Every one of these is a live template in the practice library, not a promise.
- 01
Assess
Establish what the threat actually is, and who carries it.
- Security survey report
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Threat and vulnerability assessment
- Destination risk matrix
- Risk register, scored and owned
- Country snapshot
- 02
Plan
Turn the assessment into something a team can be held to.
- Travel risk management plan
- Journey management plan
- Protective services policy
- Travel risk rules by threat level
- Roles and responsibilities, named
- Standard operating procedures
- 03
Travel prepared
The pack that goes with the people, on the day.
- Executive travel brief
- Contact tree
- Medical and emergency sheet
- Route and venue check
- Driver and vehicle daily check
- Pre-departure checklist
- 04
Respond
What gets reached for when something has already gone wrong.
- Crisis management plan and policy
- Escalation flow, one page
- Incident log
- Business continuity plan
- Tabletop exercise pack
- Situation report format
- 05
Assure
Proof the spend worked, and what to change next time.
- Vendor and provider assessment
- Post-trip review
- After action review
- Findings and recommendations report
Each document carries a reference, a version and a date on its face, so anyone holding one can tell in a second whether it is the current copy.
Evidence
One survey, and what it was worth.
A licensed venue, newly refitted, with a security spend already in place. The survey is anonymised. The numbers are not.
- 7critical
- Findings serious enough to need action before anything else
- £2,000to fix
- Total cost of the recommended changes, training and equipment
- £16,600avoided
- Loss, claims, fines and closure risk the changes remove
- 8:1return
- Eight pounds back for every one spent, paid back inside a month
What the survey found
- Service stairs too dark to use safely while trading
- External camera fogging in cold weather, coverage lost when it was needed
- Cash carried to the bank on foot, by one person, unescorted
- Rear fire door wedged open, defeating the keypad fitted to control it
- Fire exits obstructed by stored equipment
- Door staff required to seek authorisation before acting on aggression
What it covered
- General environment and local crime picture
- Access control, external and internal
- CCTV coverage, condition and retention
- Intruder detection
- Manned guarding, licensing and hours
- Control room
Rated Amber overall. Every finding costed against the benefit of fixing it, so the client could decide rather than be told.
Footprint
Where the work has been done.
Every pin is somewhere work was delivered or service was carried out. Nothing on this map is aspirational.
Base
United Kingdom
Practice base. Working across UK and EMEA time zones.
Client work
Paris
Executive travel risk and journey management for principal movement.
Client work
Monaco
Event and executive movement planning, venue and route assurance.
Military service
Iraq
Operational service. Security planning and movement in a high-threat environment.
Military service
Afghanistan
Operational service. Leadership and crisis decision-making under operational pressure.
Client work
United Arab Emirates
Executive travel and event security, regional risk planning.
Client work
Pakistan
High-threat travel risk management and journey management planning.
Client work
Nigeria
Destination threat assessment and journey management, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Client work
Hong Kong
Executive protection and corporate resilience through sustained civil unrest.
How I work
Four commitments, held on every engagement.
Risk-based, not fear-based
The job is proportionate control. If the threat does not warrant the measure, I will say so.
Decisions, not documents
Every engagement ends with something you can act on or hand to the board. Annexes support the decision, they do not replace it.
Show the working
Sources graded, likelihood stated against a yardstick, assumptions labelled as assumptions. You can audit the judgement.
Built to run without me
The measure of the work is whether it holds after I leave. I build for handover, not dependency.