No-Nonsense Tactics For Keeping People Safe At Your Next Event

 

If you’re a business or an organisation running an event, you’ll know that keeping people safe is one of your top priorities. If you don’t, you could be leaving yourself open to litigation or, at the very least, experiencing a disaster that reflects poorly on your brand. 

 

What are some of the no-nonsense tactics for keeping people safe at your next event? Here’s everything that you should be keen about. 

 

Make sure you do a serious risk assessment

 

The first step in the process, as always, is to conduct a thorough risk assessment. You should study the layout and the structure of the venue to see where potential bottlenecks might arise. One of the biggest risks at large events is people getting trampled and crushed, so check for the width of things like entrances and exits. Make sure that you have escape routes planned and enforce capacity limits. Don’t allow more people than restrictions allow to enter your venue. Think about how crowds might behave and then coordinate with local police, fire and EMS. 

 

Control access properly

Next, you’ll want to control access properly. Remember, your entryway is usually the only filter that you have to decide who is allowed to come in and who isn’t. Make sure you have dedicated lanes for entry and exit. This can prevent crowds from surging and crushing people.

 

You may also need to implement metal detectors and bag checks, depending on the type of event you’re running. If you don’t know exactly who’s going to turn up and what they’re bringing with them, then these security checks are essential.

 

Finally, make sure you cap your audience numbers strictly, track real-time counts, and close gates if necessary. If there are bad actors, make sure you have police on site to pick them up and remove them. 

 

Design crowd flows using engineering

 

If you can, you’ll also want to design crowd flows using engineering. Seeing how people are going to move around can help you determine whether your venue is safe or not. Physical barriers, fencing, and natural paths can actually make a situation on your site safer, even if putting them up feels artificial or slows people down a bit.

 

It’s also helpful to have a VIP route versus a general route so that you can differentiate the experience between customers. Make sure there’s plenty of clear signage and ground markings to show people the direction that they should be travelling in. Most people will follow these if they think that it’s the socially accepted thing to do. 

 

Staff smart

 

Finally, you want to staff people, staff smartly. Don’t assume that just having more people on the site is going to automatically be beneficial. Instead, ensure that you have the right types of people. For example, it may help to have Royal Ambulance event coverage for emergency response. You may also need to train volunteers in crowd psychology to spot suspicious behaviour. 

 

Finally, ensure that you have a chain of command and radio protocols you can use to respond quickly to incidents. Rehearse all of this in advance.