A crowd safety tech company which helped keep people safe at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation concert of King Charles III has received a prestigious royal award.
Newark-based Halo Solutions has devised leading crowd safety and security operations software — and has now been honoured with an award from the King for excellence in innovation.
It is one of a number of organisations nationally to be recognised with the King’s Award for Enterprise.
Now employing 15 people, Halo Solutions was founded in 2019 by chief executive Lloyd Major, a former national counter terrorism police officer and crowd safety and event security adviser with more than 20 years of policing experience (including police training and public order command at major sporting events).
Lloyd said: “Halo is in the business of protecting people and anywhere where the public gather, from train stations to football stadiums, festivals to universities and everywhere in between. It takes great communication and co-ordination of information and resources to keep the public safe at all times.
“The Halo system is the software that connects everything together to enhance public safety and security, which helps to protect everyone.
“Winning the King’s Award for Enterprise is a stunning recognition of the hard work we do in this space as a British tech company, bringing innovative software to the operational environments that need it most. We have an amazing team who are dedicated and committed to public and crowd safety, enabling our clients to keep their public spaces, events and infrastructure safe and protected.
“It was a fitting honour that Halo played a part in the safety and security aspects of the state funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and at the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III.”
Lloyd was also the first operational police planner in the UK to obtain a master’s degree in emergency planning and management, and developed a new process for threat assessment at public events which became national policing policy. The tragic events of the Manchester Arena bombing had reinforced his personal mission to develop a software technology platform to help keep people safe.
Halo Solutions has helped to protect the public at some of the biggest sporting, music and entertainment events across the world — including the Eurovision Song Contest, FIFA World Cup fan zones in Qatar, the Miami F1 Grand Prix, Silverstone’s British Grand Prix, Moto GP, Notting Hill Carnival, Glastonbury and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
The software provides a platform that streamlines all aspects of crowd safety, incident management, security and operations into one place, and it is now said to be the leading crowd safety and threat management platform in the world.
It enables faster responses to critical decisions, by giving security and operations teams a concise stream of information and intelligence on one platform — which can operate on a standard laptop, tablet or smartphone.
It integrates the monitoring and recording of multiple feeds of information across a venue, from security, incident management, CCTV and live drone feeds to health and safety, cleaning, medical, public reports, ticket scanning and staff accreditation — and next year it will incorporate crowd management, crowd density, flow, sentiment, mood and capacity.
As well as at major events, the platform has also been deployed at major arenas such as the NEC in Birmingham, ExCeL London, Motorpoint Arena Nottingham and the ACC Liverpool to keep millions of visitors safe each year, at major rail transport infrastructure and stations across the UK, including London Euston and a number of university campuses, including Birmingham City University.
