Safe and Effective Crowd Management

Venue managers and their staff have a duty to provide their attendees with crowd management.

Crowd management means providing an organized and safe setting for patrons entering your establishment or attending your event. Crowds run thick at venues of all sizes and without proper crowd management, the result can be an unpleasant situation or worse, a dangerous situation.

A little expertise and advice go a long way in finding the best ways for crowd management. Here are a few key elements to crowd management.

Planning

Crowd management should be planned out at the earliest stages of your event. There are a number of key figures that need to be consulted when planning crowd management including event contractors, local authorities and local transportation providers.

Understand Your Crowd

Working out the details of your crowd management plan includes considerations for the nature of the event. That is, you will approach crowd management at a rock concert much differently than at a fine art show.

Crowd management for a rock show will be more difficult partly because of the type of crowd, because there will be rebels in the audience but there are other factors to take into consideration as well.

For example, you might have a rock concert that is general admission, which makes crowd management more difficult than an art show with specific seating.

Certain behaviors can be predicted, like a crowd rushing the stage when the headlining band takes the stage or sports fans going crazy when their team wins at the end of the game.

Communication

Prominently displayed signs are one way to communicate with the attendees. Just make sure the signs are placed so that they are visible from a distance and that people are able to read them.

In addition to signs, you might want to consider a PA system. An information desk can be used to communicate with the crowd as well.

Clearly Mark the Journey

Your visitors need to know where to go and how to get there. You want to do this in the easiest possible way. Signs are a good start, but this is when crowd management barriers come in quite handy.

You see, helping others find their destination includes showing them where not to go. If there are barriers on the left and on the right, the logical choice is to continue moving forward.

Have Plenty of People On Hand

A big event calls for a rather large staff. In addition to security people, you will need event staff who can answer questions and help patrons when needed. Ushers shouldn’t have to check bags and confront unruly guests, this is what security people are for.

Have an Emergency Plan

You always need to have a plan for a worst-case scenario. There are so many things that can go wrong at an event and you need to be prepared. If there were a fire, for example, you need to have a plan to get everybody safely out of the venue.

For answers to crowd management questions, contact Sonco Perimeter Security.