Last week, the CriticalArc team were in the rapidly modernising Glasgow city centre for the SafeZone Scotland Regional Event 2025, bringing together institutions from across Scotland’s higher education sector for a jam-packed day of learning and collaboration.
Hosted in the panoramic Lantern room at Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) Annie Lennox Building, this full-day event offered a valuable opportunity for attendees to connect with peers, get hands-on with SafeZone, and explore how to extract maximum value from the platform for the benefit of enhancing safety, compliance and operational efficiency. At a time when organisations are being squeezed by shrinking budgets and resource – not to mention reels and reels of red tape – this event was as timely as ever.
GCU COO reflects on socio-politico-economic challenges in Scotland
Susan Mitchell, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Vice Chanceller at GCU, kicked off the workshop day with a warm welcome to attendees – double the turnout from last year’s regional event! Susan shared the university’s journey to acquiring SafeZone and its vision for collaborating with other organisations to transform their approach to community safety. “The risks facing our institutions continue to evolve: from severe weather events and cyber threats to lone-working and health-related emergencies,” Susan said. “These are increasingly complex, interconnected challenges, and no institution can tackle them alone. That’s why today is so important – a chance to hear what’s working, what isn’t, and how we can move forward together with smarter tools, stronger networks, and more joined-up thinking.
“Our aim [at GCU] isn’t just to respond well when something happens, but to prevent and mitigate risk, building confidence in our systems and culture. With SafeZone, we hope to enhance our day-to-day operations as well as our response to critical incidents, improve communication across the university, and connect more meaningfully with partners across higher education and beyond to other sectors in Scotland.”
Susan’s opening address resonated deeply with attendees from both GCU and neighbouring organisations such as the University of Glasgow, Edinburgh Napier University, Heriot-Watt University and the University of the West of Scotland, amongst many others.
The benefits of omnichannel communication via SafeZone
The rest of the morning was dedicated to providing an overview of the latest updates and enhancements to SafeZone. CriticalArc’s Global Product Marketing Director, Danny Malone, explained how enhanced user permissions and role-based access control have made it even easier to share and delegate duty of care responsibilities across teams in SafeZone, ensuring they can respond faster in critical incidents and provide the most appropriate level of support to the right people, at the right time.
This was followed by a live demonstration of the platform’s ever-evolving range of mass communication capabilities that make it the ultimate omnichannel tool for resilient-centric organisations. Richard Murray, a Senior Customer Success Manager at CriticalArc, gave both new and experienced SafeZone users a practical look at how the platform enables rapid, targeted communication across different groups and scenarios.
A highlight of this session was a compelling demonstration of SafeZone’s new Public Address System (PAS) function, showcasing how the platform can trigger vital communications through PAS infrastructure and provide another dedicated channel that institutions can leverage to extend their reach, improve compliance and support consistent messaging across sites. This enables organisations to embrace a more holistic, collaborative approach to managing safety and wellbeing.
Our aim isn’t just to respond well when something happens, but to prevent and mitigate risk, building confidence in our systems and culture. With SafeZone, we hope to enhance our day-to-day operations as well as our response to critical incidents, improve communication across the university, and connect more meaningfully with partners across higher education and beyond to other sectors in Scotland.
Susan Mitchell, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Vice Chancellor
SafeZone is for every day, not just for critical incidents
The core part of the day focused on how SafeZone is leveraged in everyday operations, with Danny’s interactive workshop on “Preparing Your Teams to Use SafeZone in Business-As-Usual” demonstrating how teams can embed SafeZone into routine processes such as lone working, check-ins and internal communication and co-ordination.
Simultaneously, Richard and Les Allan, Senior Consultant at CriticalArc, explained how institutions can use SafeZone to meet a range of compliance requirements, including:
✅ Health and safety
✅ Reporting and auditing
✅ Visa sponsorship and travel policies
✅ Duty of care, including mental health and wellbeing support
✅ Accessibility and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives
✅ The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, otherwise known as “Martyn’s Law”
Later homing in on visa sponsorship and travel policies with their dedicated session on this topic, Richard and Les emphasised the need for more robust, proactive support in a climate of staff and students increasingly travelling for placements, research, events and international study.
They covered how SafeZone enables organisations to safeguard travellers through real-time communication, location-based workflows, and automated alerting, with Les offering real-world strategies that attendees could put into practice based on his operational experience managing the safety and wellbeing of higher education communities across complex, international campuses.
Debate heats up over peer-to-peer safety apps
In the afternoon of the SafeZone Scotland Regional Event 2025, Danny took the main stage again to moderate hot debate between attendees as the group discussed the risks and potential of peer-to-peer (P2P) safety applications. Attendees weighed in on how these platforms offer some compelling safety features but, controversially, can shift responsibility to respond effectively from trained professionals onto the shoulders of friends, family and other peers, creating legal, operational and ethical challenges for organisations.
A roundtable-style discussion followed, inviting attendees to share their thoughts on what P2P functionality – if designed, implemented and supported responsibly – could look like within the SafeZone ecosystem. Ideas focused on sign-posting resources and providing appropriate escalation routes, with suggestions including opt-in buddy-style systems for late-night travel or remote working, as well as configurable, institution-managed safeguards that maintain duty of care.
This open forum generated a rich dialogue around balancing empowerment with institutional oversight, and will be used to shape ongoing product roadmap discussion for future SafeZone enhancements.
Breaking down silos for the benefit of all
Les rounded up a highly interactive workshop day with a practical session on how to secure executive support for safety and wellbeing initiatives backed by technology. He provided a framework for building a bulletproof business case that demonstrates how a particular solution like SafeZone:
✅ Aligns with institutional priorities
✅ Supports statutory compliance
✅ Provides maximum return on investment
✅ Contributes to the strategic risk register
✅ Requires multi-disciplinary collaboration for success
Les also underscored the importance of breaking down silos within sectors like higher education and healthcare, advocating for a collaborative approach to building business cases. By working across departments, teams can demonstrate how safety and communication solutions deliver shared value, saving time, reducing costs and risks, and driving operational efficiency – not to mention bolstering institutional reputation.
He stressed that successful buy-in doesn’t happen overnight. It requires constant relationship-building and ongoing dialogue, developing trust, understanding different priorities, and learning from one another. This approach is essential to championing solutions that serve more diverse, complex and widely distributed communities.
Thank you for joining us in Glasgow! See you next time…
We’d like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who joined the CriticalArc team in Glasgow this month – and to those working tirelessly across various sectors in Scotland to create safer, more connected communities.
If you missed out this time, don’t worry. Visit our Events page to find out more about upcoming regional conferences, meet-ups, webinars and other events we have in the CriticalArc calendar!
Equally, if you’d like to find out more about SafeZone and how it can support your community, book a demo with our expert team via the link below.
Posted 8th Dec 2025
