Building Security

Venue security: balancing safety and convenience

By Jianggan Li | 30 December 2008

Large crowds are inherently vulnerable, let alone the external threats posed by terrorism and criminals. Experts discuss how to ensure security during big events from the perspectives of event managers, venue managers and sport architects.

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A large outdoor show was in progress when a storm came through. Strong winds caused the branches to fall off the tree and it became dangerous for the 25,000 spectators on the stands.

The weather forecast predicted some rain but the storm was not anticipated. However, Greg Hooton, Senior Vice President of IMG who was managing the event, was not worried. A decision was made to close down the event and evacuate everyone in the venue.

“We made sure that we remain calm, and we had communications system between our staff through the emergency channel,” Hooton recalls. “Then we have the right communication to inform the public to please make your way to the nearest exit and please leave the venue.”

The evacuation took half an hour, with people from the area with greater possibility of incident happening being moved away first. Emergency agencies were stationed at the venue to deal with any situation which might arise.

And it was a smooth and successful evacuation, with none of the 25,000 people injured. Throughout his career, Hooton has managed many large scale events, including Gold Coast Indy, a motor sport even which drew more than 300,000 people over a course of four days.

“For events of that big size, we sat down with all the emergency services people before the event to settle the command structure out,” Hooton says. “We also run through scenarios, which may or may not happen, with them and decided what the actions should be.”

“With terrorist threats and other crowd related activities prevalent in the world today, the need for enhanced security measures and procedures is at an all time high,” says Paul Henry, Senior Principal of HOK Sport Architecture. He says that proper stadium security involved not only the hardware required, including CCTV and physical access controls, computerised tracking and vehicle & ram protection bollards. Procedures and training to handle the wide variety of threats and emergencies that can arise, including but not limited to terrorist threats, suspicious packages, evacuations, visitor identification, loss of utilities, theft, traffic accidents, vehicle management, natural disasters and civil disturbances.

“Key to properly securing a stadium involves both the physical equipment and the training of those tasked with this responsibility,” Henry says. Henry is agreed by Wong Yuen Lee, who was the Head of Operation Readiness of the Equestrian Games for the Beijing Olympics. Drawing upon her decades of experience managing Hong Kong Stadium and the intensive work in the Olympics, Wong says venue security is a complex issue that requires venue and event managers to work together with different agencies to achieve the common goal.

“Wherever crowds gather, particularly in a context of intense emotion as is the case with sport, mishaps are possible,” says Henry. “It is this intense emotion in sport, which makes designing stadia very different from other building types.”

Henry explains that many stadium disasters of the past have been a result of surging crowds, and lack of barriers between stands and the action on pitch. Wong agrees, pointing out that it is especially so for contact sports like football and rugby, such segregation is essential to protect both players and spectators.

She adds that user profiles and size of proposed events need to be factored in while designing and constructing a venue. Crowd flow and evacuation route need to be planned appropriately and ‘in accordance to statutory requirement’.

While security is as much an operation issue as a design issue, it is undesirable to make these measures look intimidating. For instance, perimeter fencing would no doubt make visitors feel less welcomed to a venue.

“We believe there is a balance to be struck between atmosphere and intimacy at a ground and security and safety,” Henry elaborates. “The segregation of the field of play is best achieved by suble means, such as a photographer’s moat.”

Henry points out that Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is an important trend to be considered in stadia design today. “All of this must be considered at the initial development stage of any new project to be effective,” Henry notes.

Wong points out several key factors to be considered, including past records for events held in the venue, incidents occurred before, training and experience of the management team and provisions within the venue.

Having visited many venues, Wong noticed a genuine lack of proper risk assessment mechanism and practice in the region. She says more training of the management staff on this topic is needed, as risk assessment has to be done with staff with relevant knowledge and experience.

Hooton adds that from an event organiser’s perspective, admission and evacuation routes are very important factors to be considered while assessing the risks. Electricity and other services also need to be covered.

Not only risk assessment is imperative before the event, Hooton adds that when the event is open, another round of risk assessment needs to be conducted to make sure that everything previously planned is happening in the right way and nothing is missing.

“Risk assessment is ongoing,” he says. “And all the stakeholders should be involved – so that during an emergency they will be able to come in timely and respond according to their capabilities.”

When worked out based on the risk assessment, emergency plans should be agreed and discussed between all stakeholders to ensure they are workable and effective. Drills and exercises are required to ensure that each party involved knows what to do once the plans are put into operation.

For event and venue management, there needs to be a management structure in place that allows a broad spectrum of managerial experience around the event. And event-specific training needs to be conducted beforehand to equip the staff, even the casual ones with knowledge and operation readiness for an emergency.

Training a conducted on specific scenarios, and Hooton says the response to a particular scenario actually gives emergency people the ability to deal with a range of incidents which are inherently similar. “The actual action you are going to take still applies regardless of the incident type,” he says. “Crowd control, clearance of the venue, setting up the perimeter – it’s more about your response time and your actual actions.”

And for large events, typically a big number of temporary staff and volunteers are hired to maintain the order and deal with incidents. Pointing out that these people are not experts in event management as experienced professional employees are, Wong says the training given to them should include event briefing, proper working attitude, emergency response training and particularly drills to make sure that they do what they are supposed to do during an incident.

Hooton warns that for all the people involved, and especially temporary staff and volunteers, training needs to be clear, concise and brief. “If you make it too complicated that the message gets lost, mistakes will happen,” he explains.

“What you also need to do is making sure you do the training at different levels, so the person at causal staff level actually needs less information and less training than one of your managers.”

Hooton also says that training needs to be tailored to the level of the person’s involvement so that the structure and response could be streamlined. The number of dry runs and drills depends on the number of parties or staff involved, their experience, requirement of the organiser and the availability of time.

“Actually much of the work has to be done on the preparation stage, there should be preparation meetings held before the events to enable mutual understanding and agreement on the overall coordination, cooperation and communication works,” says Wong. “The chain and structure are to be established in accordance to the scale of the event, level of threat, number of parties involved and the arrangement of the event in case of emergency.”

She adds that advices from the public safety agencies are to be conveyed in these preparation meetings. The structure of command depends on the size of the event as well as other factors such as VIPs and physical layout of the venue.

“You notify the authorities that the event is coming up,”says Hooton. “For a large venue and especially outdoor event, police, ambulance and fire all need to be present.”

Checks & ad mission For a major event, the venue needs to be fully checked before the public is allowed in. Proper seals are needed to ensure that the areas checked are not tampered with before the event, as some major complex venues – such as Wong’s Equestrian terrain for the Olympic Games - might require days of scrutiny.

Access control is also vital, and it begins with assessing the time in processing the screening of a person and their belongs to make sure the crowd flows smoothly, suggests Wong. “Screening has to be done by experienced professional can properly handle the situations without looking to unwelcoming,” she says, adding that technical assistance by machinery such as x-ray scanning can be considered when it is appropriate.

Wong also points out that arrival time of the spectators need to be phased out by advanced gate opening with the time printed on the ticket and publicised in the media. In addition, soft programmes and fringe activities need to be planned for spectators who arrive early or who are waiting in the queue to avoid any frustration due to boredom or prolonged waiting.

The events staff are always the first people to arrive and attend an incident. Once they ascertain what the situation is, emergency service people are brought in and take control depending on the nature of the incident: the ambulance will take care of the medical incident with the people helping with crowd control, while the police handle many other security events with medical staff standby. “The venue management and the event managers are there, but ultimately the emergency service people have the final say as they are the experts taking control of any major incident,” Hooton comments. “So you need to make sure the emergency services people work very closely.”

“These procedures need to be settled before the event,” Hooton says. “If you got a large event, you got to make sure that all those procedures and all that command structure is in place for the event so that when something happens, everyone understands their role.”

“There should be control centres linking different groups of stakeholders,” Wong says. The key control centre within the venue will look after issues within the venue while other centres look after all other facilities including the adjoining roads, water and air traffic systems and environmental factors such as weather conditioned are properly monitored to enable the smooth procession of the event in a secure setting.

Two way communications are always needed during the event as well as the training beforehand. There are different channels allocated to different levels of staff and people within the organisation; and event managers at IMG also make sure there is an emergency radio channel only used in emergencies by a selected number of people.

For the Golden Coast Indy which was mentioned at the beginning of the article, a command centre was set up off site to handle the communications throughout the big event.

“The most important in that situation when emergencies happen, you and your management have to remain calm,” Hooton says because whatever people are involved in major accident, they might be panicking, running around not knowing what is going on, it is certainly vital that the management and the emergency system remains calm and in control.

Hooton says while there is no particular way to control people’s emotions, venue and event managers need to manage the situation, as well as the emotions. “If you manage the situation in a calm manner, the people around you will see that you have the confidence to handle the situation,” he says. “It might take the edge off people’s panic if you have the plans in place and people do what they are supposed to do.”

Another thing Wong points out is a well planned alcohol policy which should be adopted prior to sport events. In conjunction with monitoring by CCTV and staff members stationed in the stadium, this ensures safety of spectators over the course of the event.

Security doesn’t end when the show finishes. Venue and event managers also have to ensure the safe departure of athletes, performers and VIPs. The revenue collected for the event needs to be escorted to their proper destination and the crowd in the vicinity need to be dispersed.

Also a debriefing on overall security arrangement needs to be conducted with the event organiser, police and security contractor on areas for improvement in the following events.

“To make sure the venue is still secure after the event – event managers have to check all the services which need to be turned off are switched off, and there is no one left in the venue,” Hooton says. “And we have to be aware that incident can still happen when the people are dispersing and the venue is being cleared – that process has to be managed as well.”

“There is still much to learn,” concludes Wong. “But as long as you are well planned and remain calm, you can ensure that situations are properly dealt with.”