Event Planning & Safety: Risk Management Plan, first things first!

When planning an event, the first and last priority of the event planner is the safety and security of everyone involved in the event: employees, volunteers, suppliers, guests, etc. With any event, no matter its size, comes risk. The bigger the event, and the bigger the crowd, the higher the risk. We've recently heard of unfortunate accidents that happened during different events this month because of  bad risk management assessment: The Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver, the 2 deaths of Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester and the injured children in the deadly bouncy castle in Long Island New York soccer tournament.

Three different events in 3 different cities but they all had in common a poor event risk management plan.  Unfortunately the 2 deaths at the Bonnaroo Festival this year were not the first as a total of 10 people died at this event since 2002 because of heat-related issues.  Vancouver riots were not the first either as the city witnessed same riots in 1994 at the same Stanley Cup event. It makes us all wonder why the organizers of these 2 events didn’t take into consideration  what happened previously in their events and took proper measures to prevent it from happening again this year.


Bob Whitelaw, the investigator who helped draft 100 recommendations after Vancouver riots in 1994, said that the police, the event organizers and the city’s public transit system ignored some of the recommendations regarding safety and crowd management.

During the 10^th year celebration of Bonnaroo Festival, one of the biggest music festivals in the US, 2 people were reported dead by hyperthermia after similar incidents occurring in 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2010.


If there’s one lesson to learn from these 2 tragedies is that events are full of uncertainties and risks. That’s why crowd and risk management should be a primary concern of any event planner and should never be underestimated or miscalculated.