Did you enjoy the sight and sound of 1966 World Cup winner Sir Geoff Hurst singing karaoke at the Security Excellence Awards in London in November? Are you an installer or other security industry person who’s put off from visiting IFSEC now it’s at London Excel, because of the cost of hotels around London Docklands? IFSEC 2022 could have answers to those questions, organisers of the show told the ST22 Birmingham conference yesterday morning.
Among the speakers at that first Security TWENTY event of 2022 was Adam Richmond, sales director for IFSEC, and the next door show for fire safety, Firex. He said that IFSEC will be able re-uniting the industry after a couple of years of not being (literally) able to get hands-on with new products.
IFSEC has acknowledged that hotels around the Excel site can be prohibitively expensive at peak demand times – such as, when the exhibition venue is busy, as during IFSEC week – which has changed from June, back to May; it’s running Tuesday to Thursday, May 17 to 19. Hence IFSEC is looking to source and offer hotel rooms from £90 to £205 a night at Stratford, a few stops away from Canning Town on the London Underground Jubilee Line, which is itself a few stops from Custom House on the Docklands Light Railway (visit the TfL website to plan your journey).
IFSEC organisers are with an eye to visitors being back after the pandemic offering a ‘festival campus’, with drinks and networking not only on show days but the day before, the Monday; and breakfast on the final day, Thursday. During lockdown IFSEC offered ‘tech talks’; those product demonstrations’ll continue at the exhibition.
Expect also new CPD-accredited training sessions in gallery suites off the main show floor. They’ll have to be pre-booked; the idea is that an installer will take a four-hour, vendor-agnostic session in the morning or afternoon, and be able to walk around the exhibition in the rest of their day (as pre-covid, IFSEC runs from 10am each day, closing at 5pm the first two days, and 4pm on the third).
Besides new ideas, you can expect what you saw before the pandemic: the Converged Security Centre returns (with the manufacturer Advancis as PSIM provider); and the LPCB attack testing centre, where products rated to the LPS 1175 security standard such as doors and glazing get hit with hammers and other tools to show how they stand up to criminal intruders, and justify the certification.
You can register for a free ticket to attend at the IFSEC website. IFSEC’s and Firex’s sister shows at Excel also cover health and safety; and facilities management; one ticket gets you into all.
Photo by Mark Rowe; Cash the owl at the NSI stand, IFSEC 2019.
