International Award Highlights Stadium Safety
British team wins at Barcelona’s Nou Camp; CST’s StewardCall “dramatically increases safety”
The increasing focus on crowd safety was highlighted at the 2011 Stadium Business Awards when Call Systems Technology (CST) won the Product Innovation Award for its StewardCall communications system.
The Award was announced at a glittering ceremony at FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium on 20th June 2011. The international audience comprised more than 220 senior sports industry professionals from around the globe, including representatives from Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup organising committee, the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga and the Olympic family.
StewardCall was developed by London-based communications specialist CST. The award judges, who evaluated the installation at Blackburn Rovers’ Ewood Park, clearly recognised its potential impact on crowd safety. At Ewood Park, each steward carries a two-button StewardCall pendant that connects directly to a supervisor or the medical team. To summon help the steward simply pushes a button on the pendant. In the past if there was an incident the steward had to leave his post and summon a supervisor via an emergency telephone. Dave Beresford, Deputy Safety Officer for Blackburn Rovers FC said: “We could see the advantages of StewardCall over our old system straightaway: our response times have improved dramatically and it’s very simple to use.”
The Stadium Business Awards judges included Michael Bolingbroke, COO, Manchester United FC, David Manica, President, MANICA Architecture, USA and Chris Overholt, COO, Canadian Olympic Committee, Canada. In making the award they commented: “StewardCall has dramatically increased safety at comparatively little up-front cost and with minimal training and low ongoing cost.”
Dave Beresford adds: “It works so well and means stewards can remain at an incident secure in the knowledge that the appropriate help is on the way.”
StewardCall is part of the communications system CST supplied to Ewood Park. The system also logs all calls, gives the control room instant knowledge of every situation before, during and after the game, and allows staff to access the system, via PC terminals, to send messages to anyone with a pager.
An even larger system comprised of 200 four-button pendants was pioneered by the Emirates Stadium and has been the mainstay of its crowd security since installation.
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