Vates Human Terrain Support Activities (V/HTSA)

Vates Corp Human Terrain Support Activities (V/HTSA) are intended to provide companies, organisations and governments with a working understanding of the local population and culture (i.e. “Human Terrain”) in areas in which they operate.

During remote operations and projects, communities and local stakeholders are often considered when an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is conducted. Following this initial exercise, however, a majority of operations apply a casual and often unorganised approach to community engagement. While this course of action often appears to keep costs down at the early stages of a project, it may potentially cost millions of dollars, and put lives at risk, especially if the social license to operate and support from the local stakeholders and communities is lost. For example, standby charges for an Oil & Gas operation in most African countries could range on the low end, from USD 10,000 per day, during Seismic Acquisition, up to USD 500,000, or more during a Drilling Programme. Additionally, and most importantly, there is no amount of security that can enable a project to proceed without support from the local communities.

The Vates Corp V/HTSA programme was developed and based on proven Special Operations Forces (SOF) methodologies and analytical techniques, leveraging our access to current information, local sources, and intelligence-led operational techniques. To enable successful operations, we provide a full complement of services to effectively manage community engagement activities that allows companies and organisations to focus on operations and delivery of core services.

V/HTSA support offerings range from high level assessments which provide insight into the decision making processes of individuals and groups in the area of operations, to design and management of community engagement through Vates Intelligence Preparations for Operations (V/IPO) and community engagement programmes through our Vates Campaign Design and Implementation (V/CDI) programme.

With this service, we take the risk and guesswork out of community engagement by offering our proven intelligence-led solution, developed and employed by SOF units around the world, using the latest analytical techniques and technological solutions to support your operations.

If you are interested or would like to learn more, please send us a message through our ‘Contact Us’ page.