By David MacDonald O ver the span of a 25-plus year career in the event security industry, Dan has seen it all. He can recall a time when it wasn’t uncommon to get a phone call from your employer just hours before a major indoor event only to be handed a makeshift map on a napkin of all the exits and washrooms on arrival. He said he remembers when it was a world of “bouncers and big guys.” “When something bad happens at an event now, it becomes the event.” “It’s getting further away from that ‘Here’s your shirt, now go work’ industry of days gone by, but I still see some major faux pas when I go to events as a spectator,” he explained. “There is still a belief among some of the event planners out there that they only need to do the bare minimum. It’s because there is a temp agency mentality around most big events. Event planners hire as many event security compa- nies as they need to fill what are essentially moats through- out the event space. It’s more or less a bunch of security guards looking for beer being passed across barriers and needless to say there’s minimal skill there. Don’t get me wrong, if the event runs smoothly and they’ve prevented outside beer from being passed through a fence, or what
have you, that’s great – especially if the client is happy. But given today’s temperament, do those guards know how to respond to the potential dangers of crowds? So many live events go with the lowest bidder for security – which is a mentality that actually kept us from joining the industry sooner than we did – and that means in some cases a company rents its shirts to the kids they hire who have no training and no means of communication. That’s just not acceptable.” It’s a hard-learned lesson that event security considerations can no longer be merely a cost centre, Dan explained. “When something bad happens at an event now, it becomes the event. In the old days you had to have security because you need to screen people at the gate – you don’t want them bringing alcohol in and impacting your alcohol sales. And at most events you’re going to have people who have a few too many beers and you need to escort them out. Maybe you need to keep a mosh pit in-check or escort an act to their tour bus. Those were basically the things that made security a necessity at an event say 20 years ago. You just needed to be a presence. We’re now more of an infor- mation piece than we’ve ever been. People at an event now expect security to know the event site in and out. That’s because as an industry, we’ve mostly moved beyond the arms folded, cold stare image of the past.
We’re approachable and knowledgeable. People expect you to be coordinated with the police, to have emergency
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2017
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