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AP Security's Planning Pays off at Glastonbury 2009

$AP Security\'s Planning Pays off at Glastonbury 2009$

Put nearly 140,000 people and hundreds of attractions - from the mainstream to the truly surreal - into several thousand acres of prime English farmland for a weekend and, without very carefully managed safety and stewarding, there is the potential for many problems. But with the long-term planning and careful site management of companies like AP Security, this year's Glastonbury Festival passed off very smoothly indeed.

"It's a cliché to say that the planning for this year's event started as soon as last year's finished, but it's absolutely true!" says Andy Stevens, AP Security general manager.

"What you have to remember is that Glastonbury is effectively several major events which are all encompassed within one perimeter fence. Each on its own would be a major undertaking for any event organiser, but combined they need massive amounts of very careful pre-planning."

The answer is threefold: firstly to ensure seamless communication and co-operation between the festival's organisers, the police and security firms; secondly to plan a long way ahead; and thirdly, to divide the site into a number of zones, making the task more manageable.

"The Glastonbury organisers have always zoned the site and they, the police and we all work to the same zones," says Andy. "Our approach is to work closely as a partnership - in other words, rather than AP working in isolation on stewarding and security in the Orange zone, we are the stewarding and security arm of the organisers' Orange zone team.

"That apparently subtle difference in emphasis in our role actually takes a great deal of careful planning and implementation, but the benefits are huge."

One of the key advantages is that any issues can be solved very quickly - the relationship between AP, the organisers and the police within zones means that the individual zones are able to deal with problems a lot more quickly than if AP staff had to refer up the site hierarchy, to their duty head of site and back down with a resolution.

"It worked really well, over 80% of issues were quickly solved within each zone. It really assisted everyone," says Andy.

However, this was just one of many major logistical challenges that AP was working on for many months before the festival kicked off.

"The planning involved in moving over 100,000 people around the site, late at night, when we're trying at all times to predict where they're going - that has to happen months in advance," says Andy.

"Back in February and March, I went on a couple of excellent crowd dynamics courses with Brian Schofield (Glastonbury head of security), Tim Roberts (Glastonbury head of health and safety) and Avon & Somerset police. We all had input into looking at crowd movement in the likes of the Trash City and Shangri-La areas, deciding how best to move huge numbers of people in a safe way, to avoid things like movement and cross-flow in high density areas.

He continues: "The thing is, high crowd density does not necessarily harm. However movement within a high density can harm and cross-flow within a high density probably will harm. So long-term forward planning is the only way to ensure that such huge numbers of people can move around the site safely.

"Another important aspect was working with the festival organisers to ensure that attractions were not placed closed to entry points. This would mean that, as people walked into an entry point they would stand still to watch the attraction. We helped to make sure all the attractions were located away from such areas to keep the entry and exit points flowing."

Yet another area where a great deal of advance planning was required was for AP's own staff. 670 people of their own to look after for a week, while they were living and working on site, was a massive undertaking.

"With the help of the festival organisers and Festival Republic, our staff were well looked after," says Andy. "All the equipment and structures, booking on systems and other facilities we needed were all set up before we set foot on site. Again, it took a lot of planning and we were very grateful to our clients for their great help with it."

Although the planning started so far in advance, it seemed like no time before Thursday 25th June was upon AP's staff and the festival was under way.

"Wednesday and Thursday saw the largest number of early arrivals that anyone could remember. Maximo Park was to open the proceedings on the Queens Head Stage, which holds around 1,000 people. With about 30,000 outside, the secret was to keep it simple," says Andy.

"Once the area around the stage was full, the security and stewarding organisations on site combined to limit further flow into the area. We took a holistic view, positioning security and stewards on the access routes around 200m from the area limiting further access, providing directions for those diverted by the opening set and, above all, communicating with each other and all the festival goers."

With the festival underway, AP's staff fell into their long-established and trained procedures of being friendly and helpful faces, ready to explain why certain things have to happen in order to ensure safety for everyone.

"We sometimes had to send people the ‘long way round', but being pleasant about it, providing information and explanations goes a long way to achieving a safe system," explains Andy. "As previously mentioned, crowd cross-flow is probably one of the most dangerous aspects of a mismanaged crowd and having ‘one way systems' is a good way to minimise that - but it's very important to explain to people why they are being asked to go in a certain way, especially if it's obviously not the most direct.

"We are there to provide direction, reassurance, maybe a warning when someone steps a little close to the acceptable line, but more than anything we are there for everyone's safety."

However, AP is not about to become complacent. Far from it, the company is always looking for ways to improve its procedures and also to give others an insight into the issues facing the company's staff

"We went to the festival organisers and proposed having independent monitors working in our response vehicles, so they could gain a better understanding of the issues we faced on a day-to-day basis and how we dealt with them," Andy said.

"We were keen to show our good practises, but also the difficulties we faced with things such as having to manoeuvre a vehicle through huge crowds, response times to incidents and so on.

"It was an eye-opener for them and a good communication opportunity for our response team managers, who could jointly solve issues and come up with ideas and proposals for future years."

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AP Security's Planning Pays off at Glastonbury 2009

16th July 2009

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