For most cities and most standard details, we work to a 24-48 hour deployment window from first enquiry to a briefed team on the ground. That's a genuine operational standard, not a best-case figure — but it only holds if a few things happen in the right order, and it changes meaningfully for larger groups, remote locations, or requests that come in with almost no lead time at all. Here's what actually determines how fast a team gets to you.
What Has to Happen to Hit 24-48 Hours
The window starts with a briefing call, not with an email sitting in an inbox. We need to speak directly with you or your point of contact — by phone or video — to understand who's travelling, where, for how long, and what the visible risk factors are. That call typically takes 20-30 minutes and feeds directly into a basic risk assessment: not the full written document a longer engagement gets, but enough of an analysis to determine team size, whether a driver-bodyguard is needed, and what local considerations apply to the specific itinerary. From there, we assign officers who are actually free and appropriate for the job — not just the nearest available team — and brief them on the client, the route, and the objective before they deploy. Each of those steps takes time, and skipping any of them to save a few hours is exactly how details go wrong. The 24-48 hour figure assumes all four happen properly, back to back.
What Slows It Down: Group Size
A single executive or a couple travelling together is the fastest case to staff — usually one or two officers we already have available. A family of six, a delegation, or an event party of a dozen people is a different staffing problem entirely. We need enough close protection officers with the right experience level, not just enough bodies, and coordinating a larger team's briefing, transport, and role assignment takes longer than briefing two people. For sizeable groups we'll generally tell you upfront if the window is going to run closer to 48 hours than 24, rather than promise the shorter end and miss it.
What Slows It Down: Remote or Difficult Terrain
Deploying into a city is a known quantity — routes, hotels, and logistics are established. A desert camp, a route through the Atlas mountains, or a private estate well off the main road requires actual route planning before anyone leaves: confirming road conditions, identifying the nearest appropriate medical support, and briefing drivers on terrain they may not cover every week. That planning step adds time on top of the standard window, and it's not something we compress just to hit a number — a rushed route plan into unfamiliar terrain is a worse outcome than a team that arrives a few hours later than the city-standard timeline.
What Genuinely Urgent Requests Look Like
Sometimes there's no 24-48 hours to work with — a threat has changed, a trip was moved up, or a client is already in-country and the need is immediate. Those situations don't get a fixed promise, because a fixed promise made under real time pressure is how corners get cut. What they get instead is our 24/7 operations desk, which triages the request as it comes in and moves as fast as the actual situation allows — sometimes that's a matter of hours, sometimes it means an interim measure while a fuller team is assembled. If you're facing that kind of situation, the fastest path is a direct call, not a form.
- Standard deployment: 24-48 hours for most cities, once a briefing call and basic risk assessment are done
- Larger groups take longer to staff correctly than a single principal or couple
- Desert, mountain, and other remote routes require route planning that adds to the standard window
- Genuinely urgent requests are handled case by case through the 24/7 operations desk, not on a fixed schedule
If you already know your dates, the single best way to protect the shorter end of that window is to call early — even before your plans are fully fixed. A briefing call costs you thirty minutes and lets us start planning against a real timeline instead of a compressed one.
For a sense of whether you need a full protection detail at all before you get this far, our guide on whether you need a bodyguard in Morocco is a reasonable first step. When you're ready to move, get in touch and we'll start the briefing call.