Health & Safety: Howard de Walden Summer Festival
Background
The OPS team have worked with The Howard de Walden Estate, one of London’s leading property estates, since 2016 - during the build, live and break of the company’s summer and winter events. We enable their events to go ahead by providing a range of event health and safety services, including documentation, Safety Advisory Group [SAG} attendance, supplier auditing and on-site health and safety.
Every year, the estate hosts a summer event in Marylebone - bringing the community together and showcasing the best of the village’s shopping and dining destinations. As always, the event invited guests to enjoy a variety of entertainment and activities across the two-day festival – from food stalls and alfresco bars to live music, funfair rides, an open-air cinema, community dog show, and so much more. Over 100 retailers were involved in the event.
For the vast majority of these events, including the Marylebone Festival, we work alongside our sister agency We Are Placemaking, who manage the event.
Challenges
· A short production schedule has, in previous years, left all parties tight for time during the build of the event. This year, therefore, we extended the build, adding an additional day to the production schedule. This decision meant elements were able to be installed more smoothly, and the event operated with greater ease.
· Our weather measurement tools, our team detected lightning in the vicinity of the village during the live event. Our Health & Safety Advisor therefore activated our emergency weather plan, confirming an amber lightning alert. We had to close down some of the rides, such as the ferris wheel, tea cups, children’s play area. Some guests had been queueing for these rides for a long time, so communciating effectively with operators, as well as eagerly-awaiting members of the public, was key, to ensure everybody on site stayed safe. Once we determined that the lightning had disperced far enough away from the event, we were able to reopen.
· As always, food safety was a significant consideration for this event: we had to ensure over 30 traders were set up safely on site. Given the vast quantity of traders, we felt it appropriate to sourcee a specialist food safety team to support us in auditing food traders.
· This year, we worked with a new supplier to provide LED screens for an addition children’s film screening day. We made sure to employ a trustworthy supplier who ensured the screen was installed and managed safely.
Delivery
Documentation (including Risk Assessment and Fire Risk Assessment)
SAG Attendance
Full Supplier Audit for 30+ suppliers and stallholders
On site H&S Advisors during build, live and break
Food safety advisors
Results
Successful collaboration with new suppliers and addition of new element, the sell-out film screenings
Effective management of weather keeping guests safe but enabling them to resume enjoying rides once safe to do so
£40,000 raised for nominated charity Greenhouse Sports – providing opportunities for young people who may be disengaged, vulnerable or facing disadvantage to develop the social, thinking, emotional and physical skills that help them thrive
Great feedback from the client who look forward to working with us again