When people think of a football stadium most probably think of the pitch, the bars and the Bovril. All busy only on alternate Saturdays during the season. Well, for the UK’s Premier League venues that outlook is as outdated as a ‘60s lace-up leather football!
Conferences. Celebrations. Banqueting. Evening Dinners. Lunches. Special Events. This is the real world of Villa Park in Birmingham, where a multi-million-pound refurbishment now provides state-of-the-art facilities that rate among the finest in the country. A busy venue, too – seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year!
But a venue this busy, this large, this complex, presents its managers with as many challenges as opportunities, starting with ensuring that both the food and that all-important perfect pitch are in tip top condition at all times. “Monitoring plays a huge part in maintaining our high standards,” says Josh Tooth, Maintenance Manager at Aston Villa.
The pitch is an obvious focus
With the advancement in Pitch Management and technology, the ground staff at Villa Park are always looking at ways to advance their management skills. The pitch already benefits from an undersoil heating system, monitored and recorded by sensors installed below the surface at a depth of 80 – 100mm and connected to the building management system (BMS). “When temperatures at this depth fall to 5°C we are alerted by the BMS and the heating system automatically switches on to maintain temperatures,” explains Mr Tooth. “Although this stops the root zone from freezing it does not stop the leaf from freezing.”
The ground staff were requesting more accurate measurement of leaf and surface temperatures to assist in management and automatic data recording, and this is where the IceSpy technology was introduced to produce the quality playing surface at Villa Park.
Villa’s three Floodlight Control Rooms are perhaps less obvious candidates for monitoring. But the masses of new electrical equipment requires IceSpy to monitors the temperature of the room and alert staff if the temperature exceeds the maximum at which this equipment can function efficiently.
“Before monitoring and alarm alerts this was a big worry since the equipment produces a lot of heat and could easily take the temperature above the critical ceiling. IMC’s IceSpy now alerts us if the temperature is heading beyond our set parameters so we can take the right steps to prevent problems,” says Josh Tooth.
Versatility Allows Leveraged Use
It’s the versatility offered by IceSpy sensors that means the same wireless technology alerting ground staff at Aston Villa to pitch condition is also keeping kitchen staff in the hospitality section protected too!
When managers came to review the hospitality aspects of the venue they naturally turned to The IMC Group for advice. The conference centre and its facilities source local produce, taking advantage of seasonal stock rather than imported goods – and the venue even has its own allotment which produces fruit, vegetables and salad items for the restaurant, community kitchen and hospitality.
“Whenever food is involved, it’s critical we know of any potential problems in advance,” explains Josh. “The IMC IceSpy system sends us alarms by email and text so there’s no need to manually check and log because the system does that automatically. Before we installed monitoring, loss of food stock was an issue and we needed to cut wastage. We have six main kitchens – all now with constantly monitored food storage facilities – and more than 70 ‘fridges throughout the venue – storage fridges, walk in fridges, kiosk fridges, main storage fridges, kitchen fridges and so on – and if just one of those has a door that’s not properly closed or one that goes down it means more than waste – one needs to consider food hazards, the inconvenience to customers, potential loss of reputation plus the time taken to get it checked, cleaned and sanitized. Monitoring their efficient running of our cold storage enables us to avoid all that!”
Villa staff receive email alerts if a fridge door has been left open or if the temperature has changed beyond set limits. The first alert is after 10 minutes and then another after 40 minutes to ensure everyone knows that there is a fault. By receiving two notifications false alarms are ruled out.
Very satisfied
Pitch-wise, the flexibility of wireless monitoring enables Aston Villa staff to move the sensor around the pitch to get readings from different points. “We receive good signal from anywhere in the ground because we have four base stations and repeaters to boost signal strength”, explains Mr Tooth. “The system is easy to interpret and we have easily configured it so it works best for us. And we’re not tied to a computer; staff have data access anywhere there’s an internet connection and the latest software even gives us WebView on our mobile phones! We were also very pleased to discover that IMC’s new system still supported our existing legacy probes so we have been able upgrade while incorporating the old probes via a hybrid base.
“We’ve never had a fault and IMC’s technical support team is excellent. They respect the level of knowledge the maintenance staff at Aston Villa have and offer helpful advice. Looking at the food aspect of the new system, we recently had a compressor fault in one of the fridges and due to IceSpy monitoring we were alerted and were able to get to it and move all the food before it was damaged. We’ve saved thousands of pounds in total due to IMC’s Ice Spy monitoring.”
IMC’s advanced systems are monitoring, logging and alerting food industry clients as diverse as an ice-cream warehouse in Kuala Lumpur and a prawn company in Norfolk, supermarkets from Asda to Waitrose, restaurant chains such as Nandos and independents such as – according to its customers – ‘London’s Best Sausage Makers’- Franconian.
“Accurate, constant and real-time temperature control impacts on everything – from regulatory compliance to energy cost saving,” said The IMC Group CEO Ian Robinson. Large venues often have particular problems, with chiller and freezer units all requiring different settings according to the produce they contain.
“Wireless temperature monitoring and alarm solutions enable users to maintain optimum environmental conditions and product quality as well as saving staff time by eradicating manual checks. It additionally provides an ideal solution for unannounced audits since monitoring and recording is automatic – eliminating human error. Advanced wireless environmental monitoring technology has broadened the reach, accuracy and radio range of multi-parameter monitoring to unprecedented levels. IMC ‘Synergy’ is a contemporary browser-based management system capable of collating the data gathered via wireless sensors and delivering the data that customers need, when they need it, ready to view, share and interact, making live data and alarms available from anywhere in the world at any time of day or night. The IMC Group offers local support throughout Europe.
“It’s not just about sophisticated software-based systems though,” explains Ian Robinson, “the food industry also uses our inexpensive specialist seafood indicators and handheld digital instruments such as our ‘Solo’ and ‘2000 Range’ thermometers for cook/chill/frozen indication through to selectable colour coding for different risk types, for example green for vegetables and red for raw meat. There’s also our IMC MM7000 Thermobarscan which is still a lightweight handheld instrument yet has integral barcode scanner and Bluetooth capabilities so it can record product location, identity, time, date and temperature data and transmit to a PC, mobile phone or PDA!”
The new platform revolutionises the way this data is delivered, displayed and stored giving the customer more control over not only what they see, but when and how they see it, and can be quickly upgraded making it future proof as well as cost and time efficient. Users can access and respond to live data, set up and amend user permissions, manage user groups and share information.
“The successful result is a tremendous demonstration of the savings that can be achieved by investing in the very best temperature monitoring system,” said Ian Robinson.
For more information click here
Follow us on Twitter @TheIMCGroup