Festival Health & Safety: Boiler Room, Miami

Background

OPS and The Fair have been working with globally renowned brand Boiler Room since 2019 – offering full scale festival production services, event operations and health and safety services.

Previous shows we have delivered include the first-ever Boiler Room day festival at East London’s Three Mills Island, and three spectacular events at Burgess Park in both May and September.

Building on a successful client partnership, our festival production and event operations teams were requested to take their expertise across the pond – all the way to Miami, Florida.

 Challenges

·      Suppliers: sourcing, connecting and liaising with suppliers overseas is naturally more complex to navigate. Our experience developing relationships with suppliers for RecFest USA, however, meant we knew how to manage overseas relationships in the most effective way ahead of arriving in Miami. We carried out a full audit of all suppliers for the show, including obtaining copies of COIs (Certificate Of liability Insurance).

·      Safety legislation: laws in US are markedly different to the UK. Having worked previously at SXSW and for our client, RecFest, in Nashville, we knew how best to liaise with the venue and the city permits office, to ensure we remained in line in city of Miami laws.

·      Audience capacity: Boiler Room is renowned for enabling audience members to dance in the immediate vicinity of the artist, ‘in the round’. Having delivered this format at Boiler Room shows in 2023, The Fair and OPS teams knew how to do this safely while managing and maintaining audience capacity. We also liaised with the fire department in Miami regarding the overall venue capacity, including individual capacities for the dance platforms.

Delivery

·      Health & safety and operational management

·       Obtained event permit in line with local laws

·       Capacity modelling for ingress and egress calculations

·       Documentation including Life Safety Plan, Event Safety Management Plan and Crowd Management and Egress Plan

Results

·      5,000 audience members enjoying a sold out show

·      Positive feedback from the client, as well as our suppliers (including the security firm who remarked our advance paperwork!)

·      Successful show delivered in a brand-new territory

·      Positive working relationship on site with Police and Fire departments

·      A seamless build, live and break​