The Marking of Midnight New Year’s Eve Celebration in London saw the banks of the River Thames full of revellers for the last time in what has been a very busy year in the Capital.

Show and Event Security deployed over 1800 Stewarding and Security staff to secure road closures and implement a full crowd management system on the north and south banks of the river from Waterloo Bridge to Blackfriars. The night saw an audience of 123,000 people in primary viewing areas between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge, which were kept to a pre calculated capacity carefully managed through a ‘count’ system and a further 55,000 in overflow viewing areas.

The New Year’s Eve Celebrations take almost a year in the planning so the Show and Event management team are already busy debriefing and developing the Crowd Management Plan for next year.
 

Thursday 28th June saw the unveiling of a memorial to the crews of the RAF Bomber Command, lost during WW2, by her majesty the Queen in the north-west corner of Green Park in London.

In addition to the Queen the event was attended by members of the Royal Household, senior dignitaries and politicians from the UK and overseas and invited members of the Bomber Command Memorial Foundation.

The event featured a choral & military music performance prior to the unveiling and the whole event was relayed to a screen in the salute area within Green Park for those persons who were unable to be accommodated in the main ceremonial area.

Show and Event deployed a team of 100 security personnel, supported by the Met Police and volunteers from the RAF and RAFBF, to assist invited guests into the dedicated viewing areas and to secure the perimeter of the event. Her Majesty the Queen arrived from Buckingham Palace through a designated route in to the park giving guests the opportunity to greet her, this viewing route was also managed by Show and Event staff.
 

Show and Event worked for National Rail to develop and deliver a crowd management plan for Stratford International, St. Pancras and Ebbsfleet, the three stations which carried the majority of the spectators to the Olympic Park for London’s 2012 Games.

Throughout the duration of both the Olympics and Paralympics SES designated two managers to each of the three stations with 10 Supervisors and 425 stewards and SIA security staff on a daily basis, during peak times, at both Stratford and St. Pancras and six supervisors with 100 stewarding and Security Staff at Ebsfleet Station.

At St. Pancras a system of queues was setup throughout the station, each with designated ‘queue coordinators’ managing Olympic Passengers into holding pens on four groups of platforms over two levels, the passengers had to be counted into the pens to maintain manageable capacity on the platforms. With this management system in place SES were able to load up to 1000 passengers onto each train in less than 3 minutes.

A similar system was put into place at both Stratford and Ebbsfleet, with staff also facilitating the egress or ‘bump out’ of each full train as they arrived into the stations. During the peak periods of the Games there was an estimated three million extra passengers per day.

Andy Watts, Operational manager for the overall event tells how Show and Event recruited a team of staff specifically to deal with the challenges presented at the three stations.

‘The stations were attended by a very diverse audience from many countries and walks of life, the workforce we deployed ensured varied languages were available thus ensuring we could converse with, advise and be understood to as large an audience as possible, we have several members of staff who are trained in Makaton allowing signing to be used where required. The signage we used was translated into several ‘key’ languages including Braille signage to ensure as wide an understanding as possible. We provided information packs and factsheets translated into several key languages’.

The Queen Victoria Memorial, affectionately known as ‘The Birthday Cake’ was transformed into the stage for a one day music concert on June the 4th as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

The event was attended by HRH Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the Royal Family with 6,000 members of the public in two seating blocks and 8,000 more in a standing area around the Memorial and down the mouth of the Mall.

Show and Event were commissioned by Robbie Williams Productions Ltd to provide crowd management and security services and write a crowd management plan for the whole concert which included a month long build up.

The underlying methodology of the crowd management plan was to direct and assign the visiting members of the public and invited guests into the concert arena in a safe manner by preventing any particular area from becoming overcrowded during both ingress and egress.

In conjunction with this Show and Event were also contracted by Innovision to provide a crowd management plan for viewing areas in the parks surrounding the concert site, this was called The Two Parks Plan. The main areas of responsibility on the Monday were monitoring a viewing area in Hyde Park, which held six screens and preventing public access onto Green Park. On the egress of the concert Show and Event also had responsibility for managing the areas accessing Marble Arch, Hyde Park Corner and Embankment Stations.

At high water on Sunday 3rd June 2012 up to a thousand boats mustered on the river Thames in preparation for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to lead the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. It was one of the largest flotillas ever assembled on the river.

Show and Event were brought in by the pageant organisers to develop an extensive crowd management plan, which took over a year in the making, to safely manage the significant crowds that were expected to line the banks of Thames that day.

To avoid overcrowding the viewing capacity along the length, both North and South, of the Thames on the day of the Pageant was divided into individual ‘viewing areas’ with a capacity of approximately 437,600 in the Central London area, to achieve this SES counted members of the audience entering these ‘controlled viewing areas’ and recorded this in the operational control room. A further 700,000 people viewed the pageant in monitored areas further along the Thames.

Lambeth, Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges were designated viewing areas open to the general public, with controlled access subject to cat 5 security checks due to the threat assessment for this event. All other bridges across the river Thames were controlled and restrictions implemented which proved the police operation with a level of security that all members of the public located against the parapet wall, had to be in possession of Personal Identification, in addition all persons had to be subjected to a cat 5 search, this was conducted by SES staff with wands at the entrance to each bridge.

There were extensive road closures boarding both sides of the river which greatly impacted on the life of local residents and people attempting to get to viewing areas. This was managed by Show and Event Staff, setting up roadblocks in the designated places and ensuring that public were directed to the appropriate viewing areas while still facilitating the access for local residents to get to their properties.

The planning process of this event involved detailed meetings with all local authorities who had responsibility for areas along the river Thames. The plan divided the event footprint into 10 individual zones each zone had its own local control room that reported into the central control room, each zone was managed by teams of SES Management and Supervisors, altogether Show and Event deployed over 6500 staff. To enable this Show and Event had to recruit over 1000 new team members in the space of 3 months.