Guidelines for Event Safety

In the absence of any agreed standards, let’s start right NOW and assemble best practice into one simple set of guidelines.

Start with the rule in place at some of the better concert production firms:

1. Crosscheck before flying. Notice how flight crew ‘arm doors and crosscheck’? That’s so they don’t blow the safety slide and they generally always get that right. So get a responsible buddy to agree all is right before sending anything above anyone’s heads.

2. Sign off designs. Who drew it, who built it, and who approved it as good to go? If you don’t have this documented, you would go to jail if you were the guilty party and someone died – like at Radiohead.

3. Work with an emergency plan. Look at pilots – they have a procedure for almost everything, and switch into ‘the mode’ when things go wrong. Weather alert? What are the steps? Do you know?

4. Call it in. How and who, where and when do you call when you don’t like the look of how something is developing? Do you know your state Work Safe number? Do you know they protect you if you call? (And a call to the media can work wonders).

What are your SIMPLE rules?