Case Studies

Parklife weekend

by Mark Rowe

The event security and stewarding at the Parklife 2015 festival was by contractor Showsec. Thousands flocked to Manchester’s Heaton Park for the music; first a concert from The Courteeners on the Friday evening followed by a line-up of performers over the weekend; the likes of Rudimental, Disclosure, Fatboy Slim and Mark Ronson.

Much of that planning was focused on the ingress and egress for the 70,000 revellers who came and went on each of the days.

Jon Drape, Event Director of Parklife, said afterwards: “Mark Logan and the whole Showsec team are an integral part of the Parklife team. They deserve full credit for the success of this year’s festival. The attention to detail and extensive experience in the planning phase resulted in a superb operation on the ground.

“We are very pleased with how it all went, especially given the scale of the festival. I think it shows the benefit of all agencies working together.”

The size of attendances and the fact that there is no camping for the public makes Parklife one of the biggest festivals of its kind in Europe. Hence, an emphasis on ingress and egress to minimise disruption when so many people arrive and then leave in a short time. As Security Director for the event, Showsec Director Mark Logan headed the planning and then the implementation of the crowd management strategy, one which featured a new queuing system.

Logan said: “We pride ourselves as a company on being innovative with our delivery systems, and this is a good example of how our planning and preparation can deliver an even higher standard of service for clients and the public. There was a strong focus on the ingress and egress operations in the planning phase for Parklife and we are pleased with the impact of the new systems in making passage in and out of the site considerably easier for customers.

“With the movement of such a high volume of people, particularly at the end of each day, we introduced an additional exit gate and assigned more resources to our crowd management support teams to help with this process. We also designed a holding pen system which cuts down the length of queues and enables us to control the release of people in stages.

He added: “Having that measure of control meant we could manage their movement more effectively at a critical time, thus reducing both the amount of congestion in certain areas and the likelihood of a rush of people.”

Showsec deployed more than 2000 staff across the three days and this was directed by Logan, while Alan Wallace (Regional Manager North), Mark Wilcock (Area Manager for Greater Manchester) and Axel Fernandes (Operations Executive) were key members of the Project Management team.

Related News

Newsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay on top of security news and events.

© 2024 Professional Security Magazine. All rights reserved.

Website by MSEC Marketing