How are radios used by stewards?

We have got a lot of stewards on duty at a football match. So the use of radios, by everyone, would be unserviceable, because it would be too much chatter. So typically, supervisors and any position above that, would have a radio and their role, really, is to make sure control is aware of what is going on in the ground. So stewards are always seen as the eyes and ears of the control room, and they will report with their supervisor anything that is happening through the radios.

Some stadiums will have telephones, emergency phones. Other places will even use the briefing sheet to attract attention and there is a symbol, which is supposed to be like this, that is to attract people's attention if a steward is in any sort of trouble or needs assistance, but radios widely used. Lots of different call signs for different people and different channels for various people using them. The safety officer would put the steward and plan together. So they would decide who is going to use the radios and they would allocate call signs to the various different people.

Some stadiums have a color scheme for the different stands and they would allocate, for example, red, blue, green and yellow and they would have a call sign accordingly. Response stewards, who are the people who are moving into challenging situations, would be a separate group of people on a different band and they would use the radios accordingly. Stewards are told never to use their mobile phones in order to call the emergency services. Always, the call must go up to the control room and the instructions come back down to the steward. If the steward was to use their mobile phone to call the ambulance, it is highly likely that the control room would not know that the ambulance is on its way.

So there have been situations, at concerts and large open air events, where a steward might have called the ambulance, the ambulance has arrived and someone else has sent it away thinking that there is no need for an ambulance. So it is always going through control and the control room will call the emergency services. It is very important to give clear instruction. Without clear instruction, people could be going to the wrong stand. They could be on to the wrong area. If the steward doesn't know the exact call sign for where they are, it could delay the time of the first aid or the response getting to where they are. In the briefing, the stewards are told where they are, what the code words are and where they will be positioned in order to know if they are speaking on the phone or via a supervisor or radio, exactly where they are standing.