Your sports journey

In this most current industry interview, Katie McIntyre talks thorough with Ian Hardcastle, Event/Crowd safety manager at King Abdullah sports City in Saudi Arabia, which he will be leaving shortly to take up the role as the general manager of ESMME, which is the H&S arm of gulf crewing in Dubai.

 

As a crowd safety specialist working for Saudi Aramco at King Abdullah sports City (KASC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, what are your main responsibilities?
My responsibilities are quite basic really, and that is to safely manage every spectator that check outs King Abdullah sports City (KASC). The reality of my responsibility and the challenge has always been how I do it. one of the major challenges I had when I arrived was that nobody here had ever been involved in or had any experience with crowds, events or stadiums, so to convince people that what I was doing was ideal was hard at times, especially in the early days. I am employed by Saudi Aramco, which as you know is the oil company. Aramco built the stadium by royal decree, and from start to finish the project took just 14 months. I am assigned to the operation and maintenance Department. everyone in my department, besides me, has been or was re-assigned to the Camiseta Bologna FC 1909 stadium project from their respective oil and gas installations from all over the Kingdom. few had ever been in a stadium before let alone worked in one. In the Saudi culture you have to build a relationship in buy to earn respect. In the beginning nobody knew me and here I was this person from UK telling all the heads of Police, the Civil service and even royalty that this is how we need to do certain things. Saudi Aramco is all about processes and often red tape and bureaucracy slows things down. On occasions it tends to be the Aramco way or no way! lots of people in the organisation were not familiar with other methods and other ways of achieving certain goals, a lot of have never worked for any other company besides Saudi Aramco. So I wasn’t received with open arms by everyone at first, but I slowly broke down the barriers and worked hard on building a rapport with any individual and everyone. Establishing a relationship with the ideal people was essential.

 

I am involved in every aspect of the stadium match day operation from start to finish. This can be anything from working with the sponsors on where best to position their activations to deciding what time the floodlights come on. On game day, I assume the tasks of the event control Centre Commander, which involves safety preparations and inspections, I also brief and encourage the emergency services Commanders on all aspects of the match day operation. There is not an element of the stadium that I don’t touch really, but my main area of responsibility will always be the safety of the spectators and that includes those who check out the sports Arena or sports Hall as it’s known for shows or concerts. during non-match days, I switch back to my Saudi Aramco role and deal with all the day-to-day safety issues like contractors work permits, HSE, fire drills and safety inspections. My job is so diverse, no two days are alike. As a team we have come a long way and we have accomplished so much. There’s always improvements to be made and can’t become complacent when you are in the spectator safety game. originating from Liverpool and with the backdrop of Hillsborough is a constant tip of that. 

 

Evac & fire Drill briefing
Evac & fire Drill 2016
ECC control Room

You Camiseta Schalke 04 designed, implemented and managed the safe entry, circulation and exit of all spectators at KASC; the newest all-seater football stadium in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a capacity of 61,000. What were the main challenges and how did you come up with the most suitable plan of action?
That’s a terrific question! how long do you have? I arrived shortly after the Inauguration game in July 2014. The Inauguration game had taken place a few months earlier in May. This was, and still is the newest stadium in Saudi Arabia. It was the vision of King Abdullah to have a ‘Jewel in the Crown’ facility for all Saudis to watch, play and take pleasure in sports. The Inauguration game was huge. On the day, it is estimated by some that around 80,000 people crammed into the stadium. I have seen some of the footage, the spectators swarmed in from every angle. The outer perimeter gates opened and it was like a scene from Zulu Dawn. They used ladders and scaled the walls and enjoyed the opening ceremony (attended by the King) and the game from every conceivable vantage point. They got onto the roof, the gigantic screen, absolutely everywhere. There were lots of problems, including the ticketing strategy. The substantial crowd were made to wait in the searing Saudi sun at the perimeter walls, and the hazardous turnstile entry system that was, and to this day still is a worry with its severe design flaws. In my opinion, it was a miracle that nobody was seriously injured or even killed that day. 

 

The first challenge when I arrived was damage limitation, and to try and design an entry system that was basic and manageable. I had to decide what was life threatening vital and what wasn’t. The entry system and turnstiles were absolutely life threatening critical, and I made it my highest priority. I needed to train the police and Stewards, but a lot more importantly I needed to educate the crowd and try to initiate a culture shift. You see, Saudis don’t like to queue, and some believe they have a lot more rights ‘wasta’ than others. You only need to drive here for a day to experience that. I needed to ‘train’ the crowd. I needed to create a crowd flow system, and get all the crucial personnel to accept it and depend on in it. The other major issue I had was that I didn’t have any fencing or crowd safety barriers to do it. I put in a substantial buy for the fencing but it would take up to 8 months to arrive. I ended up installing 2,700 traffic barriers that were surplus from the stadium build. These were the red hollow ones that you fill with sand or water. I installed these in the blistering heat and had to rearrange them for every game for a full season. typically they would be blown because of the wind or the water would leak out, the spectators would push them aside and jump the queue or climb the walls. After every game they were scattered all around. There was also a degree of apathy from some sections of the Police, some just didn’t care and weren’t bothered who got in. a lot of of the stewards were a lot more interested in enjoying the game or getting their pals in for free. lots of would change out of their uniform and merge in with the rest of the crowd and sit down and enjoy the game.

 

As I have mentioned, the other issue was the design of the turnstiles. There are six, and they all have an enclosed pen that can hold around 500 people. They have large gates that open onto the crowd. They have walls either side that invite spectators to climb and they have two ideal angles which changes the direction of the crowd flow on entry. I tried to initiate a project to change the design and made lots of recommendations but it was too late, this was all made a decision and agreed in the ‘design & build’ phase and it couldn’t be changed at this late stage. It would cost an massive amount of money to change the design and Aramco weren’t prepared to do that. I was left with no alternative but to manage the problems with the tools I had. There was a lot of bad publicity relating to the quality of the pitch during this time and this was the main priority, or so it seemed. I was beginning to get the turnstile issues under control so the management considered this a lesser priority. maybe I was a victim of my own success who knows!  

 

Over time, I gained the depend on of the Police, I trained and managed all the crucial personnel and worked hard in the control room with the CCTV team and police commander to get them to understand the dynamics and psychology of crowds, how crowds behave in certain situations, and to get them to anticipate and recognise the crowd problems before they happened. If you create repetition you can create habit, and if you create routine you can affect the culture. Sustainability was also key. The crucial personnel needed to commit to my ideas and keep opting for them. The turnstile issue has been one of my a lot of satisfying achievements. looking back now at the crowd footage of the Inauguration game and enjoying the improvement from where I started and all the problems with the entry system to how the crowd enter the stadium now in their orderly and safe steadily flowing entry system gives me a substantial buzz. The police now know how, where and when to initiate ‘stop and hold’ procedures. The stewards understand their role, but a lot more importantly the crowd have been educated and have a safe smooth and easy journey from automobile park to seat. It’s no longer a problem if it’s managed properly. The culture has been changed.   

 

Inauguration Day, may 2014, outer perimeter gates pm crowd
 

When it pertains to venue safety and security, what are the crucial elements to any robust S&S plan for a sports & enjoyment venue? how crucial is on-going training and keeping up-to-date with all the current best practices, etc.? and how have the terrorist attacks at stadia across Europe affected the way in which you work?
From my experience at King Abdullah sports City, I would say continuous training Camiseta Watford FC has to be a priority. Not so much updated training but repeated training. In the UK, we have a wonderful stewarding and police training programme, and I believe we are the world-leaders in event/stadium safety and crowd safety management. Borne, regrettably from disasters like Donnington in the event industry and Ibrox, Hillsborough and Bradford in the football industry. We have learned the hard way. We wouldn’t have had the Purple Guide, green guide and all the best practices and legislation in place if it wasn’t for these tragic events and making sure we carry out the lessons learned from them. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have that luxury, nor does it have the experience or expertise at its fingertips so has to rely on outside help. What we take for approved in the UK is a natural awareness of event safety, we are so used to the wayfinding systems, Stewards and police roles, queuing, searching, entry procedures, ticketing process etc., etc. So I would say ‘repeated training’ is probably a lot more crucial in Saudi. once the basics are ingrained in the event/stadium safety culture, then you can add the updates. keeping up-to-date is crucial to me, but in the beginning I was faced with a crowd, stewards and all the authorities that on one day were enjoying games in an old, run down, dilapidated 1950’s all-standing stadium then ‘almost star-trek like’ beamed up into a state-of-the-art stadium the next. developing the team to a 21st century conventional was a enormous challenge. As I said earlier, sustainability is key. I’ll admit I have been a ‘pain in the neck’ on a lot more than a few occasions, but in buy to get the match day operation to the level we are at now, at times I needed to be. Introducing KPI’s for the two stewarding companies has been a good initiative for the 2016-17 season. supplying feedback game by game in the form of a scoring system for their performance pre-, during and post-game has helped me identify the areas in need of improvement. AlmajalG4S, who are the Stewarding company for Al Ahli Club games have made exceptional progress this year, their team have embraced the challenge and have the potential to be a big player in the event industry in KSA.  

 

Living in the middle East, I am never far away from the possibility of a terrorist attack, and growing up in the 80’s I was never far away from the danger either, like the IRA bombs in Warrington and Manchester, and being in the British armed forces we were always acutely aware of the terrorist threat. I grew up with it. The bomb in Paris in February last year didn’t get that much publicity in Saudi, but I checked out it as my job to make sure the crucial personnel knew about it and acted on it. I have been lucky to have wonderful support police commander (Mr Yousef & Mr Ali) They gotten into what I was been trying to do and they value my opinion. Without their amazing and continued support we may have had some major issues. After Paris we examined our procedures, especially the search policy. We installed airport-style detectors and adapted our emergency action plan to include invacuation procedures. I created and organised a full stadium fire and evacuation drill and installed assembly points. I have a project ongoing to install safety bollards to replace the concrete ones we have at the moment and I had the emergency action plan translated to Arabic. The match day big screen is used to terrific effect pre-game to inform the crowd of the evacuation routes and procedures. We now have a well-trained event control team finely tuned to cope and react to every eventuality.    

 

The no smoking team at KASC
 

You were also responsible for re-writing and developing all operational safety plans for KASC’s new 10,000-seat arena, which included implementing Saudi Aramco safety Policies. Can you tell us a lot more about this process and what these safety Policies include?
When I arrived, KASC already had safety plans for the stadium. A consultancy company from the UK had done a very professional job with this. The problem I faced was that this was a new facility and what was written down didn’t needed fit the organisation, the facility or the culture. I first needed to sift through the plans, understand them and work out if, in reality, the procedures laid down were workable on the ground. I also needed to give these processes time to progress and develop. I had the blueprint and a good platform to build from but it became evident after 6-9 months I had a set of safe