Case Study.
A well known event venue based in East Anglia turned to Sphere for advice and guidance to assess their Health and Safety compliance. This was particularly important as they had just constructed a 60,000 sq ft indoor event/exhibition facility.
Sphere was appointed as competent person, on an outsourcing basis, to become the Venue’s competent Health and Safety advisors. The dimensions of the task were very interesting:-
- Put into place Major Incident plans for up to 30,000 people attending an event over one weekend
- Over viewing an Evacuation and Safety plan for a grandstand holding a maximum of 2,500 people
- Drawing up an evacuation plan for an indoor space that could hold up to 5,000 people for concerts.
- Provide onsite management surveillance, observation, mentoring and support for the build up, event and breakdown
- The overview of risk assessments and method statements for events involving the deployment, usage and layout of heavy plant and machinery
- Provide general and specific advice to all levels of site staff and management
Sphere has been working with the venue now for 12 months, with the relationship between the local authority and the venue at an all time high. Management of the differing events have become well controlled with each party knowing their own legal obligations, roles and responsibilities.
The advice given to the client has helped them to reduce the “fear factor” of a major incident and has allowed the Chief Executive to feel more comfortable with the diversity of events held at the venue.
A particular success has been the way in which the venue staff have responded to the training programme of Health and Safety awareness. This has had an added benefit of higher productivity being achieved by the venue team as some previously outsourced tasks have been dealt with in house, such as First Aid, Fire Marshals, Traffic Marshals, etc.
