The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Metal Barricades

Article published on Aug 16, 2018 The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Metal Barricades

How to (Physically) Set Up Pedestrian Barricades

Step One: Work with a queue management professional to design a queue or barricade ✓

Step Two: Order metal barricades ✓

Step Three: Ship barricades to your facility ✓

Step Four: Put together your barricades?

Setting up a barricade might seem self-explanatory, but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. Ask any event manager who hasn’t done their research on barricade setups and is scrambling to put together a queue 30 minutes before their event is supposed to start.

There are a lot of nuts and bolts (pun intended) that go into putting together barricades, and that starts with choosing the right type of metal barricade. So if you haven’t figured that out yet, read our post about choosing a metal barricade and come back to this later.

If you already know which type of barricade you need, or you’re currently sitting in front of a rack of metal barricades trying to figure out how you’re going to set up a queue that fits in your space, keep reading.

From correctly inserting barricade feet to creating corners with large and small bridge feet, here is everything you need to know about setting up metal barricades.

Inserting Metal Barricade Feet

There are three types of feet for pedestrian barricades: roller feet, flat feet, and bridge feet.

Roller feet are ideal for large events, like outdoor concerts and festivals, where you might need to rearrange your barricades throughout the day.

Flat feet are designed for flat surfaces like sidewalks, roadways, and parking lots. They grip concrete and sit flush to the ground, reducing the risk of pedestrian tripping injuries in high foot traffic areas.

Bridge feet work best on uneven surfaces like at fairgrounds, golf courses, and public parks. They come equipped with feet shaped like - you guessed it - bridges. Bridge feet stabilize barricades on uneven ground.

When you purchase metal barricades, you purchase them with either flat, bridge or roller feet. But just because you bought one type of barricade foot, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck with that foot.

That’s because barricade feet are designed to come in and out of the barricade.

Barricade feet slide into posts on either side of the barricades. After they’ve been inserted, a screw is inserted that secures the feet. If you host events on multiple types of surfaces, you can purchase replacement feet, rather than buying entirely new barricades.

Setting Up Barricade Corners

When you’re setting up a queue with corners, you will need two types of barricade feet: small bridge feet and large bridge feet.

To set up a corner, arrange the large bridge foot on top of the small foot at ninety-degree angles, then interlock the edges of the barricade to create a strong wall.

Leaving Space For Barricade Swing Gates

Once you’ve arranged a line of barricades, it’s difficult to take that line apart.

Metal barricades are built to interlock to create a sturdy barrier that is difficult to disrupt. Removing one barricade from a queue line will disrupt the integrity of the entire line.

That’s why it’s essential to use barricade swing gates to allow room for emergencies, event workers, and security professionals to pass through.

Metal barricade swing gates come in two sizes: standard width and extra wide.

Standard width swing gates are wide enough to allow for pedestrians, workers, and officials to pass through.

Extra wide swing gates are wide enough to allow room for equipment dollies, small pieces of machinery, or wheelchairs and other ADA equipment.

How to Configure Metal Barricades

Sometimes using one, uniform metal barricade length sense.

When all of your barricades are the same length, you can store them on one cart without worrying about balancing issues, and you don’t need to create intricate plans for your barricade set up. If all of your barricades are one length, it doesn’t matter what order you place them in.

Other times, you will need multiple barricade lengths to create a queue or barrier.

By using a combination of 8 ft., 7.5 ft., and 6.5 ft. metal barricades, you can create a variable length queue that fits any sized space.

Let’s look at this example: you need to create a queue in the shape of a square outside of a stadium and have 42 square feet of space to arrange the queue (we already did the math, friends, so you can all take a deep breath).

On either side of the queue, you’ll need to leave at least 2.5 square feet of space. Why? Because workers or security officials need to be able to pass by quickly without having to wind their way through the queue.

Now you only have 37 square feet of space to work with.

It would be impossible to fill that space with one standard barricade length and use the entire space, which you always want to do. It’s better to have extra space in your queue than not enough.

So to set up your queue, you will need three 8 ft. barricades and 2 6.5 barricades for each side, and 6.5 ft. barricades to fill the space inside.

(3 x 8 ft) = (2 x 6.5 ft) = 37 ft.

(See - we promised we would do the math for you!)

Before you purchase your barricades, consider the size of the space and work out which sizes you need.

Want a more in-depth look at how to set up pedestrian barricades? Read our FAQ post that will tell you everything you need to know about arranging your pedestrian barricades.