HEALTH &

SAFETY

AND

OPERATIONS

Risk management is a crucial part of the event planning process (Laybourn, 2004) which is why Radiation Events employed it throughout the planning of the event (Allen et al, 2005). Both sequential, cyclical and iterative processes (Rutherford and Silvers, 2009), event and risk management are underpinned by good planning and organisation (Purple Guide, 2014), making them main contributors to the success of any event and ones that needed to be applied from the initial assessment through to the event take down. Successful events are also measured by the level of security and enjoyment experienced by all involved (Purple Guide, 2014), which is why safe management of activities that occurred within the event such as entertainment, cocktail making and gin tasting were practiced (Purple Guide, 2014 HSE, 1999), achieved through the identification and elimination of risks where possible (OSHA, 2009). As charity and humanity features underpinned G & Tea, the organisation and staffing by volunteers highlighted a potential risk (Rutherford and Silvers, 2009), which was also addressed in the detailed risk assessment. As studies have indicated that the number one risk management concern is the serving of alcohol at events (Rutherford and Silvers, 2009; Berlonghi, 1994), the fact that G & Tea was based on tasting of alcohol posed major risks to the success of the event but also to the health and composure of attendees and staff (Tarlow, 2002). As alcohol consumption is highly unpredictable, it represented great risks to not only those consuming it, but to everyone at the event (Bladen et al, 2012) due to it affecting the audience’s profile and behaviour (Purple Guide, 2014; Rutherford and Silvers, 2009).

However Radiation Events followed academic guidance (Tarlow, 2002) to reduce the problems posed by alcohol consumption such as the following:

Hosting G & Tea at The Riverside, whereby people are trained to serve alcohol and are used to dealing with alcoholic events
Limiting the amount of alcohol served to 3 50ml servings of gin with food and water served in between
Not having an open bar
Ensuring ID’s were checked upon entry to those looking under 25

Another way in which risk was reduced was by members of the team conducting a site/venue visit to assess the potential risks (Tarlow, 2002), however the risks associated with staff, volunteers, resources and systems were also taken into account due to charitable events typically producing these risks (Silvers, 2008; Shone and Parry, 2004).

Despite these factors being included in a risk assessment by the team member responsible, it’s been noted that effective risk communication is also vital throughout the event planning and project (Silvers, 2008). Had this been done correctly, all information would have been received and communicated to the relevant persons, however this was not conducted which resulted in a second risk assessment being carried out by the other team members.

During the event no accidents occurred, meaning that all identified risks were minimised ahead of delivery and indicates a professional assessment of health and safety risks as well as event delivery due to the team being reactive and proactive in the absence of the risk manager.

Regarding the delivery aspirations for the event, Kerzner’s (1994) advice was taken into account, leading to Radiation hoping the event be constructed on time, within budget and to the level of quality desired. However the team also wanted to create high levels of customer satisfaction, drawing upon his later work (Tum, 2005). This lead to the construction of Gantt charts, the allocation of team roles and a detailed running order of the event to ensure detailed planning of event operations (Tum, 2005). With every team member having different roles and tasks during the planning and delivery of the event, it enabled their expertise to be effectively utilised to produce a smoothly ran event (Getz, 2014). The last stage of the Event Operations Management Model relates to Performance Evaluation (Tum, 2005), in which Radiation Events conducted their evaluation using feedback from a range of stakeholders including the team itself, the attendees, the Roundabout Charity, mixologist and singers to ensure a successful performance evaluation (Brown et al, 2015).

Feedback forms were sent to stakeholders asking for a performance evaluation based on the following:

Gin tasting experience

Flow of the event

Organisation

Hosts

Quality of entertainment

Catering

This enabled all aspects of the event planning and delivery to be evaluated, with the responses rating all factors maximum marks (each was out of 5). The internal evaluation resulted in the team viewing the overall delivery a success based on the event being delivered on time and to the level of quality desired, however it was hoped that more money would have been raised for the charity, however due to a realignment of funds and previous expenditure towards Radiation’s original planned event it meant that budget and subsequent profits were always going to be minimal.