Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games

Our team was tasked with providing assurance that the design and operation of a range of critical sporting venues and transport hubs supported the safe and comfortable accommodation of spectators through the delivery of proposed crowd management strategies for the Carrara venue precinct.

To do this, we established key operational principles and assumptions, applied relevant modelling tools and assessed the layout of screening areas and transport hubs. This entailed assessing what is considered a desirable/acceptable delay time at the security area (on ingress) or at the transport hub (on egress). Importantly, we established what input data was available and what needed to be agreed as a reasonable/worst case assumption (e.g. security throughput rate/ ticket check rate/ assuming 70%+ of people arriving with bags).

The planning also deployed innovative modelling tools – that included the creation of site wide simulations of anticipated spectator movements (for stakeholder understanding), crowd density maps (to highlight potential hot spots/pinch points for further consideration) and journey time analysis (to understand if KPIs were met or exceeded).

We provided expert advice on crowd movement in and out of five sporting venues – including the flagship 40,000 person capacity Carrara Stadium – and several associated transport hubs. Different modelling and assessment approaches were used for each venue, depending upon the nature and configuration of the site and the specific challenges.

This work included the development of dynamic simulations with specialist software at three of the sites where multiple sports were taking place at the same time. In addition to the visual output of the software, it generated quantitative outputs to provide a range of performance statistics that relate to the visitor experience and the operational requirements – including densities experienced, journey times, queue times and throughput rates achieved.

To deliver efficient and strategic crowd modelling, analysis of the Games schedule allowed the identification of three key demand scenarios. These scenarios represent the time periods where there is the highest volume of spectator demand with three distinct sets of movement characteristics: peak egress, peak ingress and cross-over (the anticipated demands where egress from a stadium session coincides with arrivals for another event at a nearby venue).

Combined with our lessons learnt at previous major events (Glasgow 2014 and London 2012), we provided strategic advice on aspects including the Pedestrian Screening Area layout, operation of transport hubs, and management plans for the ‘last mile’.

With confidence in their management plans, Commonwealth Games operators were able to deliver successful operations across all assessed venues.

At Carrara Stadium, a temporary increase in seating capacity (estimated at 15,000) necessitated a modification to external circulation and egress routes to avoid costly landscaping works, and ingress planning provided for an optimal allocation of no-bag lanes and banks of personal security checks.

Our analysis changed the location/orientation and order of the Public Screening Area (PSA) bag/no bag lanes to optimise operations as much as possible. No bag lanes reduced queues outside the PSA (in excess of 20% at the peak time) and lowered associated peak delay times on entry.

Importantly, this allowed people to get into the precinct and venue early and therefore offered increased commercial and promotional opportunities.

A clear guide was also developed for transport hubs to ensure that the loading pens were the correct size and in the correct proportions for onward destinations.

The result of our extensive analysis saw the Games wide-ranging events schedule successfully delivered, alongside the critical need to ensure that impacted communities continued to function smoothly.