TIPS

From experience, the following tips may help:

• Plan ahead.
• Use experienced staff. If you don’t have them seek advice or advertise for experienced staff.
• If you are short on experience make up in numbers, training and supervision.
• Visit the site in advance, note the signs, locations, staff and equipment required and make sure that it is supplied and available where and when needed.
• Make good use of warning, directions and information signs. (The car park marshal is bound to get fed up saying ‘The fee is one pound per car, or free for OAPs’ over and over again.)
• Gate staff must make the cars come to you. Don’t fall into the trap of walking towards the next vehicle or you will soon be way out of place. Instead stand your ground and erect a notice such as ‘Stop And Pay At Desk’.
• Place the fee collector inside the car park field, away from the entrance. If they are on the entrance and a driver without change arrives or one that suddenly realises they didn’t want to come into the car park, the entrance will be blocked. Moving them into the field will clear the gate for others.
• If at all possible, plan for car parks to have a separate marked exit so that vehicles trying to leave will not block the entrance.
• If a motorist comes into the wrong entrance you will have a problem. Possibly they were directed to the ‘public car park’ because they failed to display their ‘Judges’ or other pass. No matter what the reason, make them either stay where they are and use the public car park, or have diem leave via the marked exit and find their way back round again to the appropriate car park. Make sure to tell them that they should stop somewhere safe to find and display any pass (as requested on all of the arrival instructions), or they will end in die public car park again.
• Make sure gates are in radio contact.
• Money builds up quickly at gates. Make sure that cash is secure and arrange random cash collections, so that cash can be taken back to the ’s office for security counting, bagging and banking. (Remember to keep sufficient coins for a cash float at each gate.)
• Make sure that any staff on the gates know the person who is coming to relieve them. That is simplified if the relief is brought out by the roving car park supervisor, but some sort of identification or uniform will help.

Checkpoint

With all of the research above in mind and in co-operation with other staff and supervisors, the person responsible for traffic management and car parking should make a checkpoint presentation of their findings and decisions to a small group. They should then review and discuss the research and proposals to confirm that they are correct and that nothing has been missed.