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There is an increased pressure across all industries to reduce ongoing costs. At FGH Security this is no different; rising wages, increased litigation and ongoing commercial pressure from our customers are forcing us to look at alternative methods of securing premises and keeping people safe. In Japan they are already using robot security guards to patrol vacant buildings and the question has been asked about what parts of the FGH Security portfolio can be automated.
At the start of the year our senior team spent some time scanning the horizon of what security could look like in 100 years from now. How will festivals be secured as we rise to the digital age?
It was during a recent visit to Blackpool Please Beach, that Lewis Walsh, Security Manager at FGH Security has his Eureka moment, “I am hooked on grabber machines. A bit of a dab hand if I do say so myself; on a good day give me £1 and I can grab three teddies all in one go.”.
Peter Harrison, Managing Director, commented, “One of the biggest concern for us at large live music shows is flares in the audience. Not the type your mum wore in the 70’s either; we are talking about pyrotechnic flares. We have a robust procedure in place at entry points, and often use sniffer dogs and very large search teams. We confiscate a lot coming in at the gates. But just like at many football grounds, despite our very best effort they occasionally get in”.
Lewis added, “Flares are very dangerous due to the heat produced and obviously present a problem. This problem is dangerous for our team to deal with. The temperature of a live flare is very high. It takes a lot of our team to tackle the offender and generally results in an ejection from the event and sometimes an arrest from our partners in the constabulary. Our new solution will tackle this problem safely and effectively”.
Dave Hassall, Head of R&D at FGH states, “The ‘DG5000dc’ stands for ‘Delinquent Grabber 5000 degrees centigrade’. We have partnered with a Chinese crane producer, and essentially our solution will attach to the front of a main stage. It is currently operated by remote control, but over time we hope to automate this, and the system will work with heat sensors. During tests we have been able to extract delinquents, alongside their flares, from a large audience within 6 seconds.”
We hope to have the system live to use at Kendal Calling during 2018. Jon Drape, Managing Director of Ground Control, commented, “It’s great to see FGH leading the way developing new technology to deal with the current threat of flares. They are a significant issue on some shows and have been difficult to deal with. I’m looking forward to seeing the DG5000 in the field.”.
FGH Security hopes to be able to offer the service to other industries also and are looking for a premiership football club who would be interested in trialling the solution.
Could you be our next DG5000dc operator? We’d love to hear from you…
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