Operations and Health & Safety: Summer Social

Background

Summer Social returned to Richmond Athletic Ground and The Old Deer Park in June 2023, for a day of competition, music and fun at London's leading fitness and lifestyle festival.

OPS helped the client throughout the advancing, build and live stages of – auditing all suppliers and contractors, before providing onsite Health & Safety to support our sister agency and the production team, The Fair.

Challenges

• The main egress route for the festival takes attendees through an event car park, so it is always a challenge ensuring vehicles do not move throughout egress to ensure the safety of those on foot.

• This was further complicated this year by a national train strike resulting in far more attendees leaving by private car, taxi or Uber.

• Egress would need to be closely managed by the Safety Advisor alongside the security team both within the festival grounds and in the roads immediately outside.

Delivery

• Meetings were held with Security and plans put in place to set up a temporary PUDO on roads outside that led to a local golf club and leisure centre but which would be relatively quiet at the time of egress.

• In addition, event car parks were patrolled by Security to prevent vehicle movement and all entrances/exits were protected by appropriate barrier and security deployed to prevent vehicle access.

• This was fully managed and overseen by the Safety Officer and Security Manager throughout peak egress.

Results

• A successful, safe and incident free egress with minimal disruption to local traffic.

• This capped a hugely successful day of festival sport and music with very positive feedback from the client and attendees.

• We’re looking forward to working with the team in 2024.