Security Installer's regular columnist, Mike Lynskey, provides the low down on the new top man at the NSI
At long last the NSI has finally revealed the identity of the person who will take over from Dr David Holt when he retires later this year. As announced in last month's Security Installer, he is Tom Mullarkey MBE. But who is the person behind the name, the man who has been given the tough job of steering the NSI?

With the onset of the Security Industry Authority and licensing, followed closely by the Police Reform Act (which may yet turn our industry on its head) and in the face of competition from other inspectorates and QA accreditation bodies, I for one am convinced that we can expect some troubled waters ahead.

This will call for a person with special abilities and leadership skills and, although the job of Chief Executive calls for great experience, that experience does not necessarily need to have been gained in our industry. The NSI already has a team with industry experience and expertise by the bucket load so the requirement was for a blend of experience and ability, like the ability to organise a growing and expanding organisation.

Tom Mullarkey's predecessor, Dr Holt, came from the aviation industry and brought with him a wealth of new ideas and experience in business management. It was during the "Holt administration" that the ISI and NACOSS joined together and the National Security Inspectorate was born.

In today's world the stakes are high and the new leader needs not only to have exceptional ability but also be 'sales orientated', something the NSI has not previously required.

Now that the government is getting itself involved in our industry, the new man needs to be politically aware and able to tread the corridors of power around Whitehall. Above all he needs to a communicator and have the ability to talk to all people from the smallest one-man security business to the very top people in our largest insurance companies, not to mention police officers and politicians.

Career in the army
He needs to establish a balance between the needs and wants of the small company and of the large company, to stand between the police, who are keen to reduce false alarms, and the public who are crying out for more police response systems. Above all, he needs to continue supplying to the insurance companies the type of security companies that they are looking for.

Obviously, being the leader of the NSI is no picnic. Someone laughingly asked me if I had "put in" for the job … but let's face it, a fat, bald Yorkshireman with an outsized gob and a pea-sized brain is not exactly what the NSI had in mind!

Tom Mullarkey, on the other hand, is much closer to the mark. He is well spoken and well educated with a vast amount of experience under his belt, most of it gained during a long and varied career in the army.

Moving huge numbers of soldiers and equipment over vast distances takes a lot of planning and organising. For this tough task, the army looks to the universities for officers of the right levels of intelligence and confidence. This was the route taken by Tom Mullarkey, who moved straight from school to university as a university cadet officer, before going into the Royal Artillery.

He was posted to Germany in The British Army on the Rhine where he was based for six years, during which time he found himself doing a tour in Northern Ireland (Belfast) as a troop commander, and various recruiting tours around the UK. It was also while in Germany that he organised the administration for the National Ski Championships in Bavaria.

Expedition to Arctic
Following that came a two-year stint at the Royal School of Artillery on Salisbury Plain specialising in information technology and signals – useful skills to have in this computer-driven age. He also had the good fortune to spend two and a half years in Canada as a British Exchange Officer. During that time he commanded an Air-Portable Battery and produced an international military tattoo. He even found the time to organise an expedition to the Arctic.

A six-month stay in Rwanda in charge of humanitarian operations was a tense experience for him

Back in the UK he spent 18 months at the Junior Leaders Battery where the job in hand was to take 200 16-year-olds and turn them into soldiers within a year … no mean feat, as you will realise if you have had any dealings with teenagers. It takes a very special and determined team to knock a group of typical teenagers into a fit enough shape to defend our shores against all comers.

Later he found himself in India, once again as a British exchange officer – this time at the Indian Staff College. With an army of over one million the competition for places is strong and therefore of a very high quality. To get there from this country, candidates are chosen very carefully, by the Foreign Office.

A year later he was back in the UK, this time for a two year stint in Whitehall as personal staff officer to the Deputy Chief of Defence staff, Vice Admiral the Hon Sir Nicholas Hill-Norton. The job in hand was running global operations for the UK forces. This led to a six-month stay in Rwanda in charge of humanitarian operations. This was a tense experience for him, being right at the end of the hostilities and the genocide where over a million people were killed. The task was to get the people, the country and the services back to work and to look after the countless number of orphans created by the war.

Awarded the MBE
It was for his work in Rwanda that Mr Mullarkey was awarded the MBE and was promoted in the field to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

At the age of 39 he left the army to work in a merchant bank in the City of London as Senior Project Manager, the main project being foreign exchange "globalisation", which involved numerous trips to Singapore. After that it was on to Manchester where he worked on the Commonwealth Games management team as General Manager.

For the last year Tom has been working a dual role: for three days in the week he was the interim manager of the Royal Armouries at Leeds, one of the new breed of 'active' museums that have been springing up in recent years.

This is a thoroughly modern treatment of very old artefacts and well worth a visit, being both entertaining and educational. I can personally recommend it to anyone. For the remaining two days he has been lecturing in leadership at the Manchester Business School.

Lecturing in leadership
As for the man's 'private' life – Tom is 44 years old. He has been married to Sue for nearly 20 years and they have two sons aged 12 and 14. His interests outside work are walking and writing. In 2000, he and his family walked across England on the "Coast to Coast Walk" covering 192 miles in 16 days. He says it was the best holiday they have ever had … well, it was after the third day when the boys stopped complaining and started to enjoy it. In fact they are still talking about it, which is surprising when you consider that the family has spent much of its life abroad living in places that most of us can only dream about for a holiday.

He has also written and had published a book called A Thousand Hills which is the story of the troubles in Rwanda. It is of note that writing runs in the Mullarkey family … Tom has three brothers and three sisters and they have all had work published.

Whichever way you look at it, the job requirement for the post of Chief Executive of the NSI is very high spec, and it needs a special person to fulfil that requirement. Have the NSI board of directors made the right choice?