The O2 Arena strong security structure

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Paul Williams has been entrusted with a highly responsible task at The O2 Arena in London (UK). To ensure that the venue is safe and secure. And for 365 days-24/7, irrespective of whether a venue is empty or full, it must be safe and secure. And it is indeed a tough job with challenges galore.

The O2 Arena leaves nothing to chance and employs a huge workforce to ensure that fans enjoy the events in a highly secure and safe environment.

And as Williams rightly says so, he has a task in hand which “weighs fairly heavily on my shoulders – the delivery and execution of the safety and security plan at The O2 Arena in London”.

Paul Williams has been part of The O2 security team since 2014 and was made Director of Safety, Security and Risk in 2022. Drawing from more than two decades of experience in the security industry, his expertise contributes to The O2’s industry-leading safety record for the nine million guests visiting the venue each year.

In a chat with ‘Coliseum’, Paul Williams, Director of Safety, Security and Risk, The O2, UK, says that the safety and security plans drawn up by the venues are “fairly wordy and full of text” and wonders if that translates to execution in reality. He also gives details of the foolproof Readiness and Testing Programme developed at The O2 Arena in London and opines that one has to consider the visitor experience when designing the security operations.
 

The O2 Arena

The 20,000-capacity The O2 Arena, commonly known as The O2, is a multipurpose indoor arena in the center of The O2 entertainment district on the Greenwich Peninsula in Southeast London (UK). It opened in its present form in 2007.

Paul Williams states that as a strategist and a policy writer, he often has “the vision of the complexities of a plan and how to interface with the reality of the operation. And so, as a designer, I must be discharging the responsibility to execute and deliver the plan to individuals, to teams, or to services.”
 

The O2 Readiness and Testing Programme

The O2 Arena Readiness and Testing Programme is the exercising of continuity and recovery plans with the strategic leaders in the business. As part of this programme, the frontline staff attends regular simulated exercises which are incredibly valuable and help test the plans to ensure they are effective.

Giving details he stated that the design of security should be firstly risk-based and regularly assessing the likelihood and impact of security threats and implement protective security measures to mitigate those risks.

The Strategic Workstream comes under the Readiness and Testing Programme and includes table top and simulated exercises with the stakeholders. The objective of this Programme is to deliver 12 table top exercises (a discussion-based simulation that helps the teams prepare for an emergency, disaster, or crisis) a year and four medium simulated exercises (a practice scenario that mimics a real-life situation allowing the individuals to test their skills and decision-making abilities in a controlled environment without the actual risks involved) on major incidents exercise alongside the emergency services.

Added Williams, “We often do it annually, of course, competing priorities in terms of time resource and availability of space in The O2 Arena’s busy program of events.”

He further informed that under the Quality Assurance Workstream comes the Mystery Shopping Program (a practice where businesses hire individuals to act as secret shoppers in order to gather information about the quality of customer service) and Penetration Testing (a security exercise that involves using the same tools and techniques as a real attacker to try to breach the system’s security) and it tests the security processes such as access into private restricted areas and also tests the system access and the network infrastructure as well.

Continued Williams, “We also conduct operational training around the safety and security teams at The O2 Arena. It is a blend of e-learning and in-person training as well. These are the tactics that we deploy around safety and security.”
 

Safety Culture

Remarked Williams, “The above programme greatly assists in developing a safety culture and provides assurances to those individuals who are tasked to deliver and perform a very important task – the safety and security quotient of The O2 Arena. It also helps identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you can have the opportunity to address them. The Readiness and Testing Program also has the feedback cycle – you think the plan works great but in reality it is not so.”
 

Sum-up

Paul Williams sums up with his pearls of wisdom, “Those in charge of venue safety and security should always schedule a program, set eye on the strategic priorities for the workstreams and then put a program in place. One should set targets and then make it a strategic priority in the safety and security plan. Moreover, if you put in place a plan and you identify things that need to change and then you don’t act on the same, it is not good. One must always act on the lessons and the learnings that come forward.”

A robust safety and security plan in a venue “makes your operation, your business more resilient. It makes for great memories, makes the team leaders more competent and confident”.

Paul Williams and his team ensure that the fans at The O2 Arena leave all their worries behind and can let their hair down while in the stadium. They are in charge of their safety and security which is no mean task. Good security will give confidence to the fans to visit the venues and for businesses to invest and grow.

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