World To Get One-Stop Event Safety Guide

The Event Safety Guide is intended to provide entertainment organisers with a rundown of best practices.

Although the new guide borrows from “The Purple Guide” that’s been in place in the UK for about 20 years, it’s also been updated by Jim Digby – who’s behind a similar publication in the U.S. – and is being updated by some of Europe’s major staging companies.

Belgian-based Stageco and the UK’s Star Events Group, Acorn Event Structures and Serious Stages are finishing a section on guidance for the management and use of “staging and other related temporary demountable structures.”

“The industry has just said that it needs to sort itself out before the government starts sorting it out for us,” event safety expert Carl AH Martin – one of the ILMC production panelists – told Pollstar.

Production Services Association general manager Andy Lenthall hosted the panel, which was called “Lost In Guidance.” He told delegates the broad aim is to bring a global perspective as to what reference materials are available and relevant to production managers, suppliers, licensing and enforcing officers.

The staging guide was authored under the stewardship of Serious Stages chief Steven Corfield, who liased with the Health & Safery Executive, health and safety professionals and licensing officers.

“The HSE has encouraged the creation of a neutral document, with cross-industry agreement, explaining ‘best practice’ surrounding all areas of health and safety pertinent to use of stages and similar demountable structures at events,” Corfield told the ILMC gathering. “We are currently in the final stages of consultation with fellow staging companies, health and safety experts, licensing authorities and a number of event organisers,” he said.