Access Control and Queue Management at Download 2013

Granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access, Brian Sims reports on the security arrangements for Download 2013. Here the focus is on access control and event-specific training.

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.

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.

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.

Mud bath

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.

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.

Online training

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.

 

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.

 

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.

Related post:

• Event Security: Showsec at Download 2013