As festivalgoers prepare to pull on their wellies, dig out their sunhats and dust off their tents ahead of another summer of live outdoor events, Safety Management looks behind the scenes at how festival organisers keep the armies of workers tasked with setting everything up safe and well.
Festival sites have much in common with construction sites when it comes to physical hazards such as working at height, moving machinery and working outdoors. Or, as Tim Roberts, director of The Event Safety Shop (TESS), puts it: “People falling off things, people falling into holes, vehicles and plant machinery movement, and exposure to the elements outside”.
It’s all in the planning
The health and safety aspect of music festivals has come a long way since the early days, as a H&S Consultant recalls: “The whole idea of the industry at that time was that health and safety would place restraints on what they did – especially things like working at height. Nobody used a harness or a helmet – it just didn’t exist. If you wanted something done at height, you got somebody to do it. That’s just the way it was.”
“I think it would be fair to say that the world of work, as carried out by people in factories and warehouses, didn’t really apply to the rock and roll business – that we were, somehow, not outside the law or beyond the reach of the law, but that it was for different sorts of activities,” he says. “There was definitely a strong desire to stay alive and in one piece, but technical and legal compliance was not at the forefront.”
Fast-forward to the early 1990s when the events industry’s health and safety ‘bible’ – the Purple Guide – was first published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and things began to change. The document provides safety guidance to organisers of outdoor events. The Events Industry Forum took over publication of the Purple Guide in 2012 and it has since been revised and republished.
Another big change happened in 2015 when Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM) were applied to the live events industry.
“CDM very much brought the attention of the industry because we all knew we built things and that’s a fundamental thing with most events,” says James. “It was a case of, ‘you’re not going to get out of this, so how are we going to make it work for you, and how can we ensure your workers are going to stay safe under these regulations?’”
CDM helped to clarify who the duty holders were “in a business where a huge proportion of people at that time were self-employed”.
The majority of people working on festivals in the UK, adds James, are freelancers or contracted companies, which adds an extra layer of complication. This means that “tens of thousands of briefings on safety, welfare and facilities” are typically handed out to individual workers before they arrive onsite.
Speaking at the SHW Live Manchester show earlier this year, Richard Bate – a vice-president of IOSH who has worked in the events industry for 40 years – stressed the importance of getting to know the relevant people from various contractors working on an event site.
Source – britsafe.org
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