Showsec Support SWG3 in Restart After Lockdown
8 July 2020
SWG3 Glasgow reopened their venue complex this weekend as a unique outdoor food and drink space, indicating growing signs of a re-emerging venue and event industry in Central Scotland.
Showsec worked closely on planning with the venue for several weeks up to the opening. All plans, procedures, processes and risk assessments for managing public safety, security and crowd management at the venue were rewritten, revised and refined to adapt to public health guidance surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.
The venue utilised it’s 25,000 square foot outdoor Galvanizers Yard, transforming the space into Ronnie’s Bar and Bike Shop, an outdoor food and drink venue, with music and a backdrop of evolving graffiti walls.
The mutual aim of reopening SWG3’s Yard space is ensuring that the best health and safety precautions are in place. Gary McGuire, Showsec Area Manager for Central Scotland comments, “there are inevitable concerns within the industry around operators meeting their responsibility to ensure physical distancing, safety and hygiene at their premises. At SWG3, everyone’s objective is to ensure the venue is the safest place in Glasgow to enjoy outdoor food and drink”.
Jonathan Dawson, General Manager of SWG3, commented: “We are moving into an era where space becomes a commodity in the industry and that is something that we are lucky enough to have at SWG3. This space, along with a proven track record of delivering events of many types and many sizes, saw us moving outdoors into our yard.”
Announcement of the plans on social media received huge public and media interest, engaging with over 100,000 people within hours of being released. Jonathon adds, “Our announcement was the highest engagement we’ve had in a 24-hour period to any event or post, which gives us an indication of the appetite of the consumer!”
A bespoke designed SWG3 app has been created, allowing customers to book tables in advance and to order food and drink from the safety and comfort of their tables, further reducing face to face contact, the need to stand at a bar and unnecessary crowd movement around the site.
A series of measures have been implemented including thermal screening on entry, hand sanitising stations and advice to wear a face covering in all internal areas along with additional one-way systems and physically distanced queuing areas, primarily at the entrance and toilets.
SWG3 is one of the first Showsec supplied venues to reopen using our new density controlling people counting camera solutions. The technological solution was deployed to the toilet areas and provides hands-free, and distanced, digital capacity counting. Public facing traffic-light displays show available capacity within the toilets, advising customers when to wait outside and reducing potential overcrowding within.
Showsec provided physical distancing stewards, access control, thermal screening operations, internal monitoring, incident response and venue policy compliance stewarding.
Gary concludes, “It is extremely encouraging to see event organisers and venues being creative in adapting their events and spaces to be Covid-19 safe. I’m looking forward to other concepts that are in the pipeline and excited to face the challenges that the pandemic has put before us. There is growing excitement on our future opportunities within Central Scotland”.
SWG3 reopened to the public from the 6th July for a 7-day run, then opens every Thursday to Sunday, 12 noon until 10pm thereafter. Table bookings were made live on Wednesday 1st July, with over 2,200 group bookings for between 6th July to 2nd Aug being snapped up in less than 5 minutes.
Showsec and SWG3 already are already looking towards phase 3 of the Scottish Government lockdown easing which will permit indoor hospitality areas reopening, and plans are being finalised for how this will be safely implemented.
For more on SWG3 visit: https://swg3.tv/
For more on Showsec’s Solutions, including density control and thermal screening, visit: https://indd.adobe.com/view/3111d21f-9bec-4c35-b614-77f2d75de53e
Image: SWG3 2019