Rodney Cox, Director, Exhibitions and Trade Fairs
What tools do you use to assist with the risk management process?
One of the tools that we use as event organisers, but it’s used in all examples of occupational health and safety, is the checklist of identifying the risk, assessing the risk, controlling or eliminating the risk and then reviewing the process of that, and that is part of our planning when we are talking to our various suppliers and our exhibitors but it’s also part of the on-the-show, ad hoc requirement when issues come up on site.
From our company’s point of view we have dedicated Operations Managers and for some of our more complex shows we will bring in professional occupational health and safety consultants.One of the reasons we do this is because you just can’t say to someone, ‘don’t stand on the top rung of the ladder’ and expect that it’s not going to happen.You have not complied with your obligations just by telling people not to do it.You have an ongoing management responsibility to make sure that people are complying with the rules and regulations of operating in an exhibition, so all of our staff, even if they’re not directly responsible for operations or event occupational health and safety, all of our staff are briefed on the basis of going ‘if it doesn’t look like it complies, then you should check to make sure that it does comply and that people who are more specifically dedicated to that, such as our operations managers and external consultants, it’s part of their brief to continually manage the operation of the event to ensure that it’s complying at all times.
How do you address safety rules and regulations?
Delivering an event in a safe way is about — ultimately one part of it is about complying with law or regulation; ultimately it’s actually about getting the job done safely, so the goal is not actually to comply with the law, the goal’s not to go ‘I’ve done all my job, I’ve filled out every form, and therefore I’m fine’.That’s the wrong process.The right process is to say ‘we have to deliver a safe event so that all people are managed safely throughout the entire process of the event and proactively managed’.Part of that is complying with rules and regulations, and in Australia that means that there will be federal legislation, there will be state legislation, there could be local government legislation, there will be venue regulation, there will be your own company’s occupational health and safety procedures, which all sounds very complicated but in reality if you are going to book in an exhibition venue in Australia the venue is a great source because they will know the state and federal and local legislation under which they operate and then what you do is do the risk assessment on your event and the specifics of your event to make sure it complies with all of the rules and regulations plus it is the appropriate assessment for your event.
This was a challenge for the industry when it first came in because people thought there are so many things you have to comply with, but basically federal and state legislation is there, venues build that into their policies, they then add some policies to make sure that specifications within their venue are managed, every venue has different layouts, different access, different emergency egresses, you can’t just have one rule that says ‘this is what your floor plan will look like’.If you moved your exhibition to another venue you may have to change your floor plan to make sure it complies with emergency egress regulations as an example.
It is a little bit of a problem in Australia because we have so many levels of government and if you run shows in different states.To the credit of the industry in Australia, the major venues on the east coast have worked proactively together to come up with common standards or to identify the two or three where due to state legislation or venue requirements they’re different.
So there are good sources of information for an event organiser.Don’t feel that you need to know everything.As I say to students all the time, the most powerful thing is knowing to ask the right questions, not knowing the answer.If you know to ask the right questions, you’ll get the answers from the venues in particular, because they run a lot of events.If they run a lot of events they have to be complying with these regulations all the time.They’re a great source of information.
It’s been an interesting process watching the development of occupational health and safety in Australia over the last 15 years that I’ve been in the industry.Another interesting comparison is the fact that our company owns and manages events internationally and it is quite amazing how in other countries, in other western countries, European countries even, where the standards are either not as high or possibly they are not managed as well, and it was a challenge for us to take our standards into other countries and make sure that the event was delivered to our standards when actually the underpinning culture and regulations in that country didn’t either demand it or expect it, and to me this raises a very important point: It goes back to the point that OH&S is not about complying with a regulation.OH&S is about delivering a safe environment for everybody to work in and that people’s safety is the utmost priority.Yes, you have to comply with regulations but ultimately your risk assessments have to deliver a safe event.
What are some common hazards in exhibitionsand trade shows?
Exhibitions, of course, are just one kind of activity or event where the OH&S needs to apply.It needs to apply in your office, it needs to apply in all activities in business. But there are some, the 80:20 rule probably, there are some norms that occur in the exhibition industry which are the ones that quite often have to be addressed and some of those include the operation of forklifts carrying loads into an exhibition hall while there are people in the hall during the move-in process, so you have people and forklifts in the same precinct at the same time.That’s a critically important one to move.
There are simple ones like in our industry it’s often carpet is laid on the floor temporarily for the show, they’re often carpet squares, it’s very easy for the corner of a carpet square to get kicked up by something and then it becomes a hazard and that may not be an issue when the move in is on but it becomes an issue when the public come into the hall and it’s very easy when the halls are busy and people can’t see the floor because there’s a lot of traffic that they will trip over something.
Another issue that we find is that people operate above the appropriate level without rigging or safety harness, or they use a ladder one step higher than they should.Their challenge at the moment is ‘I can just fix this job if I go one step higher on the ladder and then the job will be done’ which seems easier than ‘I should go and get a higher ladder’, and therefore it’s partly culturally making sure that your participants in your event don’t do that, but it’s also a continual review process on site at the show.People are working to tight deadlines trying to get a job done but you can’t afford to let them break the safety regulations just to get the job done so rigging and ladders — ladders is probably one of the most obvious because you’re not supposed to stand above a certain height on any given ladder but that next rung of the ladder is just going to solve your problem and you’ll only be a few seconds and that’s when an accident occurs, so they’re the kind of things we have to manage.
People not wearing the appropriate safety clothing during move-in, such as safety vests and closed shoes.It’s a real issue for the exhibition industry because during the move-in process at some times you will have trades people in there and generally speaking they will wear safety shoes, but right at the end of the move-in you will have the exhibitors come in, often on a weekend, because the show is going to be open during business days so it moves in on the weekend, so they come in to work for a few hours to put the brochures or whatever on the stand and it’s a hot day so they’ve got their thongs on, so there is, to my point that I raised before, you have different stakeholders in the room at the same time.Trades people will generally comply.They comply with safety because that’s the day to day thing that they have to do when they’re at an exhibition or elsewhere, but one of your exhibitors doesn’t think it’s unsafe to wear thongs into the hall because they’re just going to put a brochure on a shelf, but the reality is they’ve come in during a move-in day so they need to be there in the day with the appropriate clothing.That is very much about communication.It’s very much about telling your exhibitors ‘if you are in the hall during move in you will have to wear the appropriate safety clothing even if you are not involved in any task which you perceive to be dangerous, you will have to wear safety vests, you will have to wear closed shoes, so there’s a couple of examples.
Can you elaborate further on the example of ‘climbing ladders’?
If we talk a little bit about climbing a ladder: climbing a ladder in an exhibition is no more dangerous than climbing a ladder at home or climbing a ladder if you’re on a construction side.So ladders actually come with instructions as to what’s the appropriate sort of ladder to use in an electrical environment or a non-electrical environment and the height above which you should not use the ladder or if you’re using ladders in combination the way you should do them, so there are actually instructions on the ladders which would comply with regulation.
The problem generally speaking comes when people break the rule that’s written on the ladder.So the rule is very clear.Or we will also provide exhibitors with information and quite often we will tell them about the top things that they’re likely to do, and the thing to take away from that is that there are things in a certain environment that people are likely to do, so our exhibitors are likely not to wear safety clothing on a move-in day because they don’t think they’re doing anything industrial, and people who may not generally speaking be a trades person but just want to pop up on the ladder to move that brochure that they’ve put up on the wall are using a ladder in an environment where they normally don’t use ladders and so they don’t necessarily think, ‘oh, I need to check about using a ladder before I use a ladder’.Ladders are a really good example because we have them at home.They are something that people probably misuse elsewhere, and that’s one of the social norms that we have, whereas if you probably wouldn’t have — you certainly wouldn’t have someone who came into the hall and go ‘I don’t normally drive a fork lift but I’ll drive one now’ but they would come into the hall and go ‘I’ll just pop up that ladder and fix something’ so it’s about managing people, and that’s why the risk assessment needs to be a continually ongoing process during the movein, especially the movein and the moveout of the event, to make sure that people are complying with regulations.
What is involved in the event planning in terms of risk assessment?
When planning your risk assessment, there are some natural timelines to follow and the process starts long before you are on site at the event.The important thing to understand is that you have different stakeholders who you interact with at different times, and they need the information in the time that is appropriate to them, so when you first book an event with a venue you must make sure that you have the venue’s requirements at the beginning of the process so that when you’re planning your event, especially designing your floor plan for the event, that it will comply 18 months later when you actually deliver the event.We often say it’s easy to fail to comply on the paper but then 18 months later when you’re building it at the venue if you’re not complying then that’s when you have a real problem, so time frames are really important, and it’s in both practical terms and in sensible planning terms the venue at which you are conducting the event is a very good place to start because they will have their guidelines, they will be a source of information about the state and federal government regulations that they have to operate in all the time, and they will provide you with the information that you need to design your event layout, the physical layout of your event, to make sure that it will comply when it is constructed.
In the exhibition industry a very common issue is to do with access to fire hydrants, access to emergency egress, there are rules and regulations about the fact that when someone is in an exhibition hall they have to be able to access, see access to the exit and reach access to the exit, and so part of it is being able to see it and part of it is the fact that they must not travel more than a certain distance to get to the exit.This is a good example of planning.When you have an empty exhibition hall, it’s a straight line between you and the door.When you’ve built all the stands you can’t walk through solid walls; you actually have to go around a longer path to get to the door, so to comply with the regulation as to the distance between your position in the hall and the nearest emergency exit it’s not based on the empty hall, it’s based on the plan you are going to design in the hall, so if you don’t get the plan right you won’t be able to comply when you build it, so that’s an example of right at the beginning of the time frame finding what the rules and regulations are for the venue.
Every venue is different, every state can be different, but there will be guidelines that you can generally get from the venue about designing your plan.So what we do as exhibition organisers is then design the layout of the plan showing where the stands are and showing where the other facilities are such as the café and maybe stages or other areas within the show.We then provide that plan to the venue and they have to approve the plan before we go out and sell that to our exhibitors.The idea behind that is that 12 months later that plan will be able to be built and comply with the regulations, not that we did it and found out later that it did not comply.That’s a good example of timing.
Other examples of timing are you appoint your contractors, the people that will do all sorts of activities in the hall.They will lay carpets, they will do registration, they might do rigging from the ceiling, they could be building booths, they could be driving forklifts.So an important part of the planning process is to make sure that the occupational health and safety requirements are negotiated and discussed with them at the time you brief them and appoint them.In practical terms, they are a great source of information because generally speaking they do a lot of events and work in a lot of venues, so at the beginning of the process my advice is that you speak to your potential bidders and ask them to provide you their occupational health and safety regulations, a copy of their policy, a copy of their public liability insurance, and a copy of their WorkCover policy to make sure that they are a valid person to book, so the three parts to that were that they have occupational health and safety policies, which is the action guideline; they have public liability insurance, which is an insurance policy which covers their staff working in the venue; and that they have WorkCover policy, which is to comply with the WorkCover in the particular state in which they operate or in which the show operates.
So here’s another practical example where if you go to the bid process to appoint someone to do work at the show, include questions about occupational health and safety and what they can bring to you as part of the approval process so that when you choose which one you’re going to use you know at the beginning of the process that they have the policies in place but they also have the experience and they can contribute towards delivering a better show with their area of expertise.So if you do that at the beginning of the process you will find that you’ll have a much easier process as you go along and that as you’re doing the planning everyone will know what regulations you’ve complied with.