Event Safety Insights Issue Three | Spring 2017 | Page 19

truck was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on
the Promenade des Anglais?
But even if we can secure our venues, then
what? Who checks the food vendors, cleaners, toilet providers,
the fence builders, stagehands and the hundred and one other site
crew known and unknown that build the gig? Are you background
checking them all, searching every van, truck, flight case and toilet
as it arrives? If you are, well done for getting the budget to make
that happen but that will never be reality for most events. In truth,
is that not how many drugs arrive on event sites? Back home, many
of the events are organised by local town councils or organisers
with tight budgets. They get three quotes and normally someone
in the accounts department goes with the cheapest. It’s called the
procurement process and rarely has much to do with quality or due
diligence in checking trader’s credentials.
Can we even discuss accreditation? One of the
most complex, expensive and critical aspects of security on any site
is the control of who gets where, when and how. Then we get a girl
or guy on $10 an hour to try enforce it. They get chastised when they
stop the festival producer: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ That same
person then screams at them when someone dressed smartly man-
ages to sneak past them and meets the artist, yet when the artist ar-
rives with more hangers than a rich girl’s wardrobe and all of them
are ushered through without accreditation or with the artist’s own
accreditation that no one has seen before. The staff are too scared to
stop them and if they do, they get shouted at again. Oh, for the op-
portunity for artist management to come to the Event Safety Summit
and understand that we are trying to keep their prized possession
safe, as well as the public and ourselves!
If that is hard, just how empowered are your staff to stop a cop in
uniform and thoroughly check their accreditation? What if that looks
wrong? Are your $10 an hour people brave enough, supported
enough and confident enough to say ‘No, sorry but I need to call a
manager’. We call it subsidiarity: The guy or girl on the ground floor
having the power to make difficult decisions and be supported at
the most senior level, even if they make a mistake. No ba