Due to national shutdown of the industry and with no events to manage yet this season, what does the Event Safety Advisor do with their time in Lock-Down? The Safety Team at OPS have been trying to use their time spent working from home constructively. In order to maintain a degree of normalcy, we have been exercising our more creative sides in a variety of ways.
We are keen to make sure we stay up to date with the latest trends and thought leadership in our industry and as such, we’ve been taking advantage of a broad range of home-based and online resources.
Last week we listened in with enthusiasm to the great webinar provided by Cranfield that looked at the effects of COVID-19 on the Events and Festival industry.
The latest edition (and back issues) of The Crowd Magazine is available online and is an excellent read with interesting articles from Prof. John Drury and Anne Marie Chebib amongst others.
We engage in various discussions and forums (internally and externally) on various social media platforms. LinkedIn is a particularly useful business tool for us right now, with some interesting conversations happening on the topics of #eventsafety and #crowdsafety. Particularly at this time where in the midst of such monumental change.
We are also making use of our time at home to get the team to further hone their H&S skills by taking advantage of the complimentary Safety for Managers on-line course provided by NCRQ . This is a great resource and one that has been gratefully accepted by our group.
Another useful online training resource that some of the team will be taking advantage of is provided by UK Protect/ACT/Counter Terrorism Policing – https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/national-counter-terrorism-security-office and provides up to date advice on CT measures. Senior National Coordinator for Protective Security, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lucy D’Orsi says: “This is really useful training that anyone can do and access at any time. It’s an opportunity for you to play your part in protecting the national security of the UK.”
From next week, We Are The Fair’s Safety Team will also be hosting internal training sessions for our Production Manager colleagues. We will be holding mock Safety Advisory Groups (SAGs) where we play the role of the Local Authority and the PMs will be presenting their festivals and events to us for constructive criticism.
Our CEO, Nick Morgan, has also registered the company with Gov.UK to offer our assistance with the current situation. It’s possible that our broad range of skills, including Event Control, Logistics, Project Management, Emergency Planning, Capacity Calculations and on-site Safety Officers could be transferable and of use to Local Authorities.
