Key Takeaways:
Building owners and facility executives in commercial and institutional facilities of all kinds have had to rethink almost every aspect of security and safety in the last 20 years, from design and access control technology to staffing and resilience.
For sports facilities, these challenges have been compounded by one unique aspect no other market faces — intensity.
“It’s the excitement that's generated around the teams, the players, the history,” says Robert Koshgarian, national sports director, project and development services, with JLL, a real estate services company. “Even the gaming side of it has become more of a security concern at this point. Emotions get high in these environments, and you have so many people that are coming in in a flood.”
To meet these challenges, an owner might want to harden a facility against every possible threat and crisis, but that approach goes against the need to operate a welcoming, successful facility.
“People don’t want to go and feel like they’re in a prison or a fortress,” Koshgarian says. “Their experience carries with people outside of it, along with the excitement they have to come back again.”
Striking a balance between effective access control and an appealing facility is critical for owners looking to maximize their investments in sports facilities, as well as for managers responsible for overseeing a safe and efficient facility.
“We understand that the venue owners and operators only have a certain amount of money they're able to allocate to do improvements at their venue,” says Matt Nebel, principal and managing director of secure design with Walter P Moore, a design, architecture and engineering firm. “There’s a balancing act.
“We know we can’t do everything, but how do we score or rank the best measures that we can implement at the facility? That gives the owner or operator the ability to say, ‘These five things were ranked as the most important, and I have the financial ability to do that, and I’m going to do that.’”
Security considerations in sports facilities often start with understanding the expectations of the organization that governs the teams that use them.
“The building owner or operator needs to understand if it’s the NFL or the MLB or NBA, they understand the league-wide approach to security,” Nebel says. “If they’re planning capital projects, what is the overall league looking at from a security perspective? They need to make sure that as they do those (projects) for their specific venue, they’re in compliance or they’re understanding what may be coming down the road.”
While owners of existing facilities need to have a clear sense of security expectations, they also need to have a complete understanding of the array of equipment, materials and technology the buildings contain.
“You’ve really got to understand your team, your location, the makeup of the building and the systems that are in place,” Koshgarian says. “One of the big challenges now is that we’re getting such rapid kinds of new technology developed.” These rapid changes create challenges for managers trying to ensure that new-generation technology can integrate with existing systems.
“It’s the technology communication language adaptation piece that is challenging from product to product and from manufacturer to manufacturer — integrating those systems so you're reducing gap times.”
One growing trend among sports facilities involves owners who are exploring and planning expanded operations in areas surrounding the structure, often incorporating hospitality and retail facilities. These widened areas of operations can drive revenue for organizations, but they also can create additional security considerations, such as the efficient flow of people and vehicles.
“A lot of these venues want to expand their perimeter,” Nebel says. “They want activation zones to create additional revenue generation, and they want those activation zones to be safe and secure. You have a lot of people walking around, but how do you do that with vehicle impact elements that impede flow?”
While owners planning security upgrades in existing sports facilities face challenges that are similar to those involved in planning new facilities, they do not have the advantage of being able to address them before construction begins.
“You typically have the opportunity as you’re starting the design and then the construction process to inject these security requirements into the project early on,” Nebel says. “If you have the opportunity to do it from the start, do it from the start. You don’t want to have to come back two or three years after opening a facility and make some major renovations to that facility and put in more money when it could have been incorporated more seamlessly during the actual design and construction process.”
Security technology has evolved rapidly in recent years with advances in a host of products, including metal detectors, surveillance cameras and facial recognition software. Koshgarian points to two pieces of emerging technology in particular that offer owners potential benefits to facility security:
Behavioral measurement. Camera systems enable monitors to use heat detection and generate heat maps and general body temperatures of facility occupants.
“If you have somebody storming through a concourse and their heat register is much higher than everybody around them, you may have something, whether it’s a general safety concern for their own well-being,” Koshgarian says. “Or it is a larger concern that you want to intervene with and make sure you assess the situation correctly ahead of time.”
Digital twin technology. The software enables designers to model an actual real-world facility in order to simulate security features and scenarios before construction begins.
“There are limits to how many times you can run something in the physical environment without disrupting your business operations, so finding the means to continually run new scenarios is helped by that type of system,” Koshgarian says. “There are gaps and variables when you’re doing this physically and trying it out. I always advise go physical, but this allows you to test your flows of people and access points and fault chains.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
