How to turn a venue into a safe and secure setting for events

Seamless communication, coordination and training between planners and venue helps to make an event a success.

Shortly before a conference is due to be held, the venue is told that the number of delegates has doubled but its remaining facilities are already booked for another event.

A fire risk is identified in the trial run for a convention due to the use of cold fire in the staging and there isn’t enough time to put in place safety measures, switch off smoke detectors or get hold of backup staff.

How should the team react to these situations? What solutions can it suggest? What is the action and safety protocol it should follow? Ongoing training of employees in this area, close and transparent coordination between the team and the customer and the security unit‘s professionalism meant they were both successfully dealt with.

 These are two of the case studies our Managing Director, Sylvia Andrés, spoke about at the 32^nd OPC Spain National Conference, held in Santiago de Compostela on 20-22 February and which brought together the country’s leading professional event planners.

‘High alert vs. total calm. Safety, security and prevention at conferences’ is the title of the presentation that Sylvia Andrés shared with Antonio Carballal, the Director of CYEX Congresos, in which they unpicked the measures designed to ensure safety and security at events. This joint presentation shows how important coordination between planner and venue is for the safety, security and success of a conference.

Besides safety and security, the core themes of this ‘conference of conferences’ as its planners describe it are technology and sustainability. For the first time in the event’s history its ecological footprint will be measured, mainly by looking at the emissions generated at the conference venue, the speakers’ travel arrangements and the fuel costs involved in carrying out assembly work. 

Want to learn more about this conference? You can here