SAFETY FIRST

PSA’s Andy Lenthall shares some key insights from this year’s Event Safety Summit.

Safety Island: that’s what they call the UK, those touring folks from the USA – unfavourably, so we’re led to believe. When they come over here, legend has it that they plant a stars-and-stripes flag on stage and do what they jolly well like. Thing is, every time we pop over to the Event Safety Summit in Lititz, PA, the good people at the Event Safety Alliance continue to see that moniker as a light towards which they should lead their ever-increasing band of followers.

There’s so much content delivered over two-and-a-half days that we can’t possibly cover it all due to lack of space and the inability to be in three sessions at a time. What we can do is share a few new insights and look at some responses to an audience survey that was carried out during the event.

First word goes to Founder and President, Jim Digby, who left the conference with three takeaways before things had started, simply because he was working in Saudi Arabia before the event had closed. Learn CPR, get trained in the use of an AED and take mental health first aid training – three things that, if acted on by the hundreds in attendance, would see vast improvements. Engagement is always key to the Event Safety Summit; workshops on all manner of subjects ensure that but, as presentations in the main space took place, the audience was polled on a number of questions.

An encouraging split in the experience level of attendees showed 50% of those present having 16+ years of time served, with 16% stating less than five years, showing that there are old dogs willing to learn new tricks or happy to pass on valuable experience.

A healthy 57% of attendees were at director or management level, giving the hope that initiatives and learning will filter down rather than struggle uphill through the ranks – crucial with something so critical as safety – even better when 60% have their hands on budget to buy and specify safety-related equipment and services, the majority being from actual production vendors rather than event safety people.

Clearly the Event Safety Summit is still talking to the right audience and not preaching to the choir. With the right audience, questions turned to the assessment of safety culture in organisations, probing the attitudes of leaders but bearing in mind that with an audience at a safety conference, data may be skewed by a predisposition to already creating safe workplaces.

Two thirds of those who responded claim that safety training is a job requirement. However, one third say the opposite, which on those results alone, leaves plenty of room for improvement. Further questioning on factors limiting the take up of safety training cite the perennial time and money conundrum from the majority.

More interesting is the 13% of responders stating that quality of training is not up to scratch. It may not be a surprise that over two-thirds of those who responded said their organisation’s management supports their safety mission – no shock as they’ve given time to attend a safety conference. This makes sense in that two-thirds either directs, manages or owns the organisation they are representing at the summit, and most have responsibility for spending money on safety.

That doesn’t mean that one-third don’t get support, in fact, 25% stated that support was there but was cost dependant. That just left 5% without support and 1% don’t know. Of c ourse, there’s nothing like an accident to encourage organisations to review procedures, and just over half had reported an accident in the past five years that has led to a change in organisational policy, procedure or process.

It can’t be said too often to those that see the cost of safety management that the cost of an accident can be much higher than the cost of preventing the accident and near misses are the very best opportunity to make changes.

More enlightening perhaps, are more opinion-related responses, less influenced by audience make up. Just one question of this kind asked: “Which of the following do you believe to be the greatest inhibitor to the reporting of accidents, near misses and dangerous occurrences?” ‘Lack of understanding of importance’ accounted for 50% of opinion, with ‘lack of process’ coming in with 26%. We’re not sure of the legal obligations around reporting, but that is a concern. ‘Fear of retaliation’ is low yet perhaps too high above zero at 7%.

Couple that with 18% of people suggesting a fear that nothing will change as a reason for not reporting, and it is clear that there is an opportunity to educate workers about why reporting incidents is important and educate employers to have a process in place to accept such reports.

The former could be achieved by greater uptake of the ESA’s Event Safety Access Training (ESAT) – an initiative similar to the Safety Passport over here; training that explains how a safe workplace is managed and the crucial part that workers play in management systems. Wi th the right audience seemingly heading in the right direction, content is critical to ensure interest and engagement.

Naturally, the usual suspects such as the eternal fight against gravity and the effective management of the all-important crowds were coupled with an increasing focus on wellbeing and a particularly interesting session on the effects of pyrotechnics and other SFX on rigging.

You could probably guess the effect of a 35W laser on a fabric sling, but it’s always cool to see it melt on stage. We’re awaiting the copy of the presentation of results from measuring the effects of pyro on truss, looking into deflection caused by recoil.

If nothing else, it was a story of how to annoy the neighbouring tenants on the Rock Lititz Campus. After all, the test really does need to involve the largest and most powerful explosions.

There’s so much more to report without the space to do it justice. If we can, we’ll share more information on other presentations online, but let’s just say that the Event Safety Alliance is less about temporarily declaring independence on our small Safety Island and very much more about flying the unified flag of life safety first.

TPi

www.psa.org.uk

www.eventsafetyalliance.org