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INTERVIEW
STEVE KEARNEY, MANAGING PARTNER, GALLOWGLASS HEALTH & SAFETY GALLOWGLASS HEALTH & SAFETY’S MANAGING PARTNER EXPLAINS HOW EXPO 2020 IS SET TO BE A CATALYST FOR GROWTH AT THE COMPANY.
Health and safety is always of paramount importance for any large-scale event, and with delegations from 191 countries as well as tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world descending on Dubai for a six-month period, they don’t come much larger in scale than Expo 2020 Dubai. For Steve Kearney, Managing Partner at Gallowglass Health and Safety, which has been tasked with delivering HSE for the entire Expo 2020 site, the project represents a milestone for the company.
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“It’s a massive undertaking, the likes of which have never been seen in the Middle East before,” he described to TPMEA prior to the show opening on 1 October. “The ramp up in scale as we get closer to the beginning is huge.” Gallowglass’s role at Expo is a large and multifaceted one, with more than 40 team members already engaged in the project full time. “For our purposes, the whole site has been split into six zones and we have four HSO Zone Managers per area, working shifts to ensure that
each zone is covered 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Kearney explained. “Worker welfare is high on the agenda at Expo, and nobody is allowed to work more than 48 hours per week. We’ve built in some redundancy to our rota to ensure that everyone has the appropriate breaks and time off throughout the project.” Kearney described the roles of the Zone Managers as “a two-pronged approach”. He commented: “Their first remit is to look after crowd safety during the busy periods when large
