Health and safety can sometimes seem like a load of time-consuming red tape – when you’re busy planning an event or production, it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of proper health and safety planning.
From a risk-management perspective, it’s important for organisers and project managers not to lose sight of health and safety – what’s the point in carefully planning entertaining and engaging events or productions if someone is going to be injured or, in a worst-case scenario, killed? Financial ruin and potential criminal charges are neither entertaining nor engaging!
Clients, designers and contractors all have specific health & safety duties. This brief guide identifies the duties Project Managers and Event Organisers have and who you are responsible for under the law. Also listed are some tips to help you organise a safe and successful production.
WHO ARE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR?
You are responsible for the health and safety of:
1. People who work for you – employees, freelancers, volunteers, contractors, suppliers
2. Your attendees – public, invited guests, ticketed or non-ticketed
3. Anyone else who could be impacted by the work you carry out
WITH THOSE PEOPLE IN MIND…
Here is a three step process you should take to best manage health and safety at your event: Organise-Deliver-Audit.
ORGANISE
During the organisation phase, you need to decide who is going to be responsible for the various health and safety duties:
- Are you going to manage it all yourself, or are members of your team going to take on certain responsibilities?
- Are there any competency gaps with regard to health and safety within your team? Can you train your team or sub-contract services?
- Would it be better if someone independent of your organisation handled all health and safety matters, leaving you more time to handle other aspects of your business?
In any instance, it’s important to ensure that the people who are in control of your productions health and safety are aware of their responsibilities and can be trusted to handle them competently.
Next, you should consider creating a safety plan.
Health and safety has a risk-based approach and what that means is that if you’re running a bouncy castle on the beach, it will require less detailed health and safety planning than if you’re running a music festival in a farmers field. There’s a big difference between a slipping and falling on a bouncy castle and a structural failure of a staging system!
When considering your safety plan, should you consider the scale of your production, its audience, its location, what kind of activities you’ll be putting on, how long it will last, and the time of year.
You should engage with all stakeholders during this phase, including your staff, venue owners and managers, the creative team, your contractors, local authorities and (if appropriate) emergency services. These people will provide valuable input and insight in to the health and safety risk of your production. Contractors should be selected on their ability to deliver a competent and safe service. Your staff should be fully trained to manage the risks associated with their job and how to handle them.
You should develop an emergency plan: Yet again, this will be risk-based and the level of emergency planning put in place should be proportionate to the event. You’re not going to need ambulances standing by for a private party for 50 people, but you would if you’re planning a mass participation sports event.
Some emergency incidents to consider are fire, injury, bomb threats and natural hazards though there may be others due to locality or risks involved. You should consider what response there will be to each emergency risk – do you need a first aider on site? Will the venue or site need to be evacuated? Where will you evacuate people to? Will the emergency services need to be standing by?
Emergencies are rare, but often have big consequences. Some emergencies tend towards certain activities more than others, but you should consider your risks in light of your activity and plan accordingly.
DELIVER
The important thing to remember here is that you’ve made a plan: Stick to the plan!
During the delivery phase, you’ve identified all your risks and put in appropriate controls to minimise their impact and ensure that everyone’s going to have a great time.
You’re setting up your production – are your staff setting up in line with agreed health and safety protocols? Are contractors showing that level of care and competence expected?
Your production is now underway, and everything’s going great – or is it?
During the delivery phase, you, or your appointed individuals, should be feeding back information periodically to ensure consistent health and safety standards. You should be reporting on how the careful planning you’ve prepared is being delivered and if something does go wrong, handle it according to the plan!
Consider “near-misses” – this is where an accident could have happened, but luckily didn’t. Where, for example, something fell and nearly hit someone. Next time, it could be a miss and it’s important to log near misses as much as actual injury as it will be important in your audit stage.
AUDIT
Your event is over: Nobody has died and with the exception of the odd bump, scratch and bruise, nobody was hurt!
Although you may feel after such a successful event just sitting back and relaxing, it’s important to review and reflect on your event and determines precisely what happened in practice and whether or not there are improvements you can make next time.
This is why near-misses are important – although it may have seemed like a remote possibility in the planning stage, did the reality of your event pose an un-thought-of-risk? If it really was unforeseeable, then nobody can blame you for this, but they can and will if you fail to act on it next time.
POINTS TO TAKE AWAY
1. You’re responsible as an organiser for your staff, your guests, and your contractors.
2. With those people in mind, you should follow a organise-deliver-audit approach to your health and safety planning
3. All health and safety is risk-based – the greater the risk, the greater the level of planning and monitoring.
4. You should contingency plan for all plausible issues by engaging with all parties. Local authorities will be helpful in determining local issues.
5. Who is responsible for ensuring delivery and reporting back to you or an appointed individual?
6. You should plan for emergencies and put in place procedures to deal with things when they really go wrong.
7. During your event, you should periodically monitor how your planning is put into practice.
8. Near-misses are just as important to note and deal with as actual injury!
9. After your event, you should review your practices and consider what happened on the day and any near-misses that may have occurred. Use this to plan your next event if appropriate.
10. There are hefty fines for breaches of health and safety – up to £20,000 per breach. From a financial perspective, can you really afford not to follow it?
11. Where an individual is personally responsible for a serious breach, you could even face criminal sanctions. Plan, plan, plan, plan some more, and make sure it’s happening!