Access control at an event the size of the Download Festival is a critical and massive operation.
Not only will there be occasional surges of people wanting to enter the main arena — for example, just prior to the set of a major band kick-starting — but there are also the not inconsequential matters of ticket checking and bag search to be addressed.
At the top slope of the main Donington arena next to the ticket office, some 34 separate ingress lanes had been organized and staffed by SIA-licensed and trained Showsec event stewards. Showsec’s Tracey McCarthy was in overall charge of entry and exit management.
The searching teams are all headed up by supervisors
Showsec’s staffers are all fully trained in safe searching techniques
People are searched as they enter the main arena to ensure they haven’t brought prohibited items through from the campsite.
Stone and shale in certain pinch points prevents the arena from becoming a mud bath
Significant queues can build up at entry points, particularly when popular bands
are about to start.
Showsec staff prepare to search bags on entry
Campers prepare to enter the Download site.
Each day, 90,000 people need to be searched on their way into the main arena, with the majority camping on site and an average of 3,000 people with day tickets, 2,000 people entering the site on VIP passes, and 1,000 using disabled passes.
Showsec’s staff is responsible for bag searching, because certain items that are allowed on the campsites are forbidden in the arena. Of course, they will also look for illegal items such as weapons and drugs.
Showsec staff prepare to search bags on entry
One of the barrier supervisors we spoke to at Download was Claire Bradshaw who first worked for Showsec back in 1994 as an event steward at Wembley. Having then spent some time in property consultancy, Bradshaw rejoined the company in 2011.
June this year saw Bradshaw become a management development associate at Showsec, working towards becoming an operations executive. To her great credit, she recently gained a first-class degree in Event and Festival Management through Buckinghamshire New University. She told us:
I’m one of six Showsec Management Development Programme students to be working at the entry barriers during Download. In terms of profiling and checking people and bags at the entrance gates, we need to strike a balance whereby everything’s thorough but not too intrusive. Bag searches have to be extensive, at the request of the client.
Significant queues can build up at entry points, particularly when popular bands
are about to start.
Sadly, the rain rarely stays away from a rock festival arena. It sometimes feels as if the two are attracted to each other much like a moth to a flame. Back in the Monsters of Rock days at Donington, this could — and often did — lead to a mud bath developing, in turn incurring the risk of slip-and-fall injuries.
Stone and shale in certain pinch points prevents the arena from becoming a mud bath
Festival organizers have done a tremendous job of preventing any such situation from developing. Just inside the main arena barriers, for example, organizers invested in a stone and shale surface for an area where there’s necessarily a great deal of footfall. It’s easy to walk on and totally devoid of mud — the perfect remedy, and part of a GB pound 500,000 investment in new drainage and roadway engineering onsite.
People are searched as they enter the main arena to ensure they haven’t brought prohibited items through from the campsite.
New technology is also very much part of the Showsec mix onsite. “The industry is changing,” said Showsec’s managing director Mark Harding. “It’s moving towards management based around tablet computers, for example, which is where we’ve placed heavy investment.”
Showsec’s Simon Battersby, head of security at Download 2013, elaborated on that theme:
Our online e-learning platform was adapted so that we could disseminate briefing documents to members of staff prior to arrival on site. On top of that, extensive planning with the team from Live Nation ensured that the client’s aspirations could be cascaded from our own management team through to the supervisors and, in turn, on to the event stewards themselves.
Showsec’s staffers are all fully trained in safe searching techniques
Roy Wise is the training and development manager at Showsec, and the man who has actively driven National Occupational Standards for the event industry. Speaking to IFSEC Global by the main ticket office at Donington Park, Wise explained:
The online e-learning platform really comes into its own for an event like this one. Pre-event, we can instantly check who has completed what training and where and then place people at the event according to their specialisms. Live Nation pretty much builds a small town from scratch for this event. There’s an onsite hospital and fire station. Necessarily, the safety provisions have to be as good as they possibly can be. Absolutely nothing is left to chance.
The searching teams are all headed up by supervisors
Paul Cook is group head of health, safety, and security for the festival management team at Live Nation, and he moved to support Wise’s assertions:
Showsec boasts an excellent training package and management structure. This is the first year we’ve chosen to work with a single main security contractor, and this is one of the reasons why. Theirs is very much a team approach to working with an extremely high degree of technical and logistical knowledge and experience. That’s what we favour.
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90,000 people with as much gear as you see in that picture seems like it would be frustrating for just about everyone. On that note though breaking it down you’re just under 3000 people per lane every day so that’s not a monumental task as long as traffic into each lane is fairly even. It’s almost impossible to keep everyone happy in a situation like this but it does sound like they have a lot more thought to this than I’m used to seeing.
Agreed, I wonder how throughly you can search that number of people and still maintain the pace… I do not envy those security personnel’s job at all.
From a visitors perspective in the past, i do feel like the searching has got better, but it’s still a relatively scatter gun approach. Maybe things have changed more recently, not sure. Obviously, the search when you enter the campsite with all your bags and the subsequent search when you enter the ‘arena’ are distinctly different in nature.
How granular do they get when going through the campsite search? It seems like that would a whole lot more relaxed as far as what you can bring in but I’m sure there are still limits as to what you can bring in as far as sharp objects and fuel go for example.
Most of the festivals I’ve been to have a no glass policy, so they quite often just give your bags a good squeeze to see if they can feel any glass. Beyond that, it’s drugs, which Police dogs take care of, mostly.
I don’t spend time at festivals like this, are they OK with things like propane canisters? I see a lot of large packs in the photo and the mention of camping makes me think people might be bringing in ways to cook. Aside from broken glass being hard to clean up I can’t see where it’s more dangerous than a rusty old propane grill.
Well, quite. Yes, generally they are allowed, and yes generally some idiot sets one alight and injures themselves or others.
That’s actually pretty interesting. I’ve done tailgate parties in stadium parking lots where there were similar rules and saw similar issues. No glass bottles but there were hundreds if not thousands of grills going some propane some charcoal and my first thought was that someone was worried about being cut but what about being blown up because of a leaky gas tank meeting hot charcoal. I know they are going after the most likely issues and that broken glass everywhere is much more likely than a propane cylinder becoming a missile but one is going to do a whole lot more damage than the… Read more »
I’ve heard about these parties, they seem pretty incredible. Is everyone drink driving at these events?! You make some great points, I suppose it’s about what is proportionate and reasonable. As long as staff are awake to stamping out any idiocy.
Well the driving part is supposed to stop when you get to the stadium so there isn’t much driving going on during the festivities but after the event I suspect the number of people who are over the legal limit and driving is quite high. There is something about some areas and events in the US that make people think that drinking and driving is acceptable. I went out on a community event that involved towing kids around house to house on trailers to go trick or treating this weekend. I stopped counting the number of drivers with a beer… Read more »
Wow, that’s a whole other level. Bet the kids loved it though…
Yes the kids love it, the neighborhood is very large and houses are too far apart for kids to hit more than a handful by walking. Over the years it has turned into a rolling party, people decorating trailers like pirate ships and amazing yard displays. Thankfully I’ve never heard of any accidents but I suppose it’s only a matter of time with that many kids and that much rolling stock.
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