By Dr. Susan Brown Foster
Most event and facility managers have a basic understanding of risk management. However, a comprehensive risk management plan that is written, practiced, and enforced is a key element for maintaining patron safety and in preventing lawsuits. However, it is the responsibility of the facility owner event manager, or the appointed risk manager to ensure every staff member or volunteer understands their role. Use of the Ten-Step Risk Management Model© can assist facility managers in planning for optimum safety and preventing many injuries and illnesses.
Since 9-11, there has been increased targeting of major sporting events and facilities. This has caused facility and event managers to intensify vigilance and step up security far beyond the typical safety protocols created to prevent problems and injuries and keep patrons safe. Increased vigilance and planning must be utilized for terrorism, active shooters, and pandemics. Creating partnerships with local emergency personnel is crucial and these agencies should have copies of your Ten-Step Plan. Coordinating all ten steps of the Ten-Step Risk Management Model© will prevent many problems and injuries from happening and assist all staff members in being prepared for the unexpected.
Step 1 – A comprehensive plan begins with the identification of every event taking place in a facility and includes identification of controllable and uncontrollable factors. Examples of controllable factors would include making sure all equipment to be used is in excellent shape and all aspects of a facility including lighting, flooring, ingress and egress patterns and areas, spectator seating, and ancillary areas be free of hazards. Making sure appropriate participation areas and equipment are clean would also fall under this category. Examples of uncontrollable factors include weather, patron behavior, medical emergencies and injuries, fire, active shooter, and chlorine leaks. A final component of this step is to obtain or create a comprehensive list of all staff and volunteer positions for the facility or event, who holds those positions and their business contact information, and any company contracted out to fulfill certain roles such as a security firm. This is an important aspect of this step because anyone in charge of creating the comprehensive plan will need this information in future steps.
Step 2 — This step is one which most facility mangers understand and use regularly and that is a facility audit. However, an audit must be conducted in minute detail. Going over every inch of every room, area, piece of equipment, walls, and exteriors is one key element. In an audit, every problem found needs to be noted and documented. One audit is not enough. The first audit should be when the facility is entirely empty and subsequent audits when areas of the facility are at maximum use by teams, players, and spectators or other users. An additional example of a separate audit would be when a sport facility is being used for an atypical event such as graduation or a concert. Facilities can be used in various ways and different crowds and users can result in different ways facilities are being used. All rules being used by the facility must also be noted during this step. A copy of any employee or facility manual should be obtained. Discussions with staff members who use each area may also be necessary to uncover problems they may have observed in usage of their assigned areas. Audits conducted when a facility is being used is often missed by insurance companies hired to conduct the audit.
Step 3 — This step is the creation of a comprehensive safety improvement plan. All problems found with facilities, areas, equipment, and usage must now be addressed. Part of this step may require multiple forms to be created to fit every room or participation area and possibly pieces of equipment. A weight room is a good example to use whereby a general form for the layout of the floor and each equipment location. Forms for each piece of weight or exercise equipment is also important. Exercise equipment has multiple moving parts and a trained individual should regularly check all equipment. It is possible to skip this tedious step if an employee of the manufacturer is hired to conduct this particularly important task. Sometimes, this can be arranged as part of a contract when purchasing equipment. Once a comprehensive safety plan is written and implemented and forms created, a process is established for regular audits where supervisors roam the facility hourly, daily, or weekly using the created forms. Staff training is covered in a future step, but supervisors must be taught what to look for and how to properly complete forms. Another important part of the process is for facility managers to establish who reviews the forms immediately after each shift/audit so any observation that needs addressing immediately is handled or the piece of equipment or room be ruled off limits until the problem is adequately address.
Besides creation of the above forms, additional attention is crucial to the cleaning of equipment and areas to prevent the spread of germs. COVID-19 has created increased awareness for attention to cleanliness, but other illnesses have been highlighted in the past such as the problems experienced with community associated MRSA, which can be spread through skin-to-skin contact, or staph infections. Thus, additional forms should be created to ensure regular cleaning of areas and equipment is performed.
Other parts of this step would include reviewing existing rules to ensure they adequately cover all activities and are enforced at all events and by all staff. If the facility owns or contracts out for vehicles to transport patrons for events, is there a comprehensive maintenance plan for each vehicle and a process for checking and cleaning vehicles upon their return? Are qualified drivers hired after a full review of their background and driving records? These are just examples of rules or processes that need careful attention.
Step 4 — Transferring risk takes place in this step. Does the facility have waivers, and do they align with state/federal laws? Have appropriate lease agreements been created transferring liability from the facility to external event managers/users? Are the appropriate accident and incident forms available and are they written in a manner that would capture all problems and properly document all injuries? Are they written in a manner whereby they would be easily completed? What about insurance? Many forms of insurance are available to protect the facility and its employees from financial loss?
Step 5 — This is the planning stage and is broken down into three different components.
Part 1 -This includes the creation of an emergency action plan (EAP) for each type of uncontrollable event identified in step 1. While some aspects of an EAP can be used for different emergencies, some steps may be different. For example, what a staff member is expected to do for a gas or chlorine problem would be totally different in a medical emergency. This is a comprehensive part of a plan and often must be created by consulting with specialists such as fire, medical, poison control, or hazardous waste professionals.
Part 2 — For serious emergencies or for events where recovery may be prolonged as with fire or hurricane damage or loss of life, it will be necessary to have a comprehensive communication/media plan. This plan begins with documentation of phone numbers for each department within an organization or for contacting emergency personnel. Additional components include having a communication tree. After appropriate emergency personnel are contacted, high ranking personnel within an organization are usually contacted first. Other staff members may need to be called if off duty. Often, members of the media may be calling or will need to be contacted. The organization should have a plan in place regarding who is appointed to talk to the media and what they may be allowed to say. A public relations department may be involved in this part of the plan and can craft written statements to the media possibly after consulting top managers or staff members present at the time the incident occurred or what the organization may be doing in subsequent days or weeks to mitigate the injuries or damages. Careful attention is needed to what is said especially in public statements as inappropriately worded information could be used against an organization if a lawsuit were to be initiated against the facility.
Part 3 — All emergencies will need some type of equipment and supplies. Whether that be communication equipment such as walkie-talkies, emergency medical including first aid kits, or pool related equipment, or even as basic as flashlights. Hurricane Katrina taught everyone that satellite phones were necessary when cell towers are damaged or destroyed. Taking inventory of what is already on hand and what needs to be purchased for the multitude of possible emergencies will assist managers in having everything needed. The University of Virginia’s (UVA) Intramural-Recreational Sport Department utilizes zoned backpacks, and each is loaded with specific types of emergency supplies common to different types of situations or areas. Contents of these packs could include generic items one would need in an emergency such as a first aid kit or flashlights. A sample of items UVA uses includes safety vests, caution tape, EAP written plans, a cell phone directory, and more. Backpacks are then assigned to specific zone wardens who have been trained to use their contents. Packs such as these could also be used by staff members or volunteers stationed at different intervals for major road or bicycle races.
Step 6 — Like step 5, this is a major step in that all staff training is planned and carried out at this point. Perhaps an employee manual needs to be written which would possibly be handled by a committee of experienced staff members. Included would be the staff directory assembled in step 1. Establishing training protocol for every staff member or volunteer is the major task. For example, if there is a packed basketball arena and a tornado hits much like what was experienced at the 2008 Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tourney in Atlanta, would everyone know exactly what to do? In this situation, one specific person would be designated to be in charge with back up staff members assuming a similar role should the top designee not be at work. Home team coaches who are familiar with the facility would be trained on what to do and where to take athletes. Of course, the training would be for general situations because each different emergency event can have a different protocol dependent upon the situation at hand. Training must include all staff members with role playing in advance. Most people are familiar with fire drills; the local news often reports on active shooter drills conducted at local schools. This is the type of role playing in which all staff members should participate. Waiting for an emergency to happen is not the time for employees to try and figure out what they are supposed to do or how to protect their patrons.
If a particular event or facility utilizes volunteers which is the case for many larger sporting events, it is equally important to train volunteers in advance. College campuses have lots of student workers and should be included in all training exercises. Some facilities do not allow anyone to work an event unless they have gone through all training.
Step 7 – At this point all training has been completed and the bulk of the risk management plan has been completed. Hopefully, the plan won’t have to be used for a long time. However, in sport related facilities, accidents are going to happen, and medical emergencies may be the most common event to handle. Depending on the facility, patron behavior may be a close second. So, now you have an event. If everyone has been trained and all the above six steps are complete, handling an emergency will be less stressful if everyone performs their role like clockwork. So, what is next? Step 7 is implementation of the plan. Staff members step into action, alerts are issued, emergency personnel notified, and equipment/supplies are picked up from a common storage or backpacks picked up by involved staff members. In this step, accident or incident report forms are completed.
Step 8 — Now everyone is in the recovery phase. Injured individuals have been treated or transported to emergency facilities. Damaged facilities are secured as much as possible. If the event was at a large outdoor facility, perhaps staff will be gathering equipment in a different manner than if they were simply closing down and securing everything in a planned fashion at the completion of the event. Perhaps traffic cones were scattered over several miles due to a weather event.
If individuals were severely injured at your event, certain staff should be appointed that will follow-up with these individuals or their families to determine what else the sponsoring organization can do. This should be a significant component of the recovery phase. Long-term planning on how to fix damaged facilities or build anew would be part of extended recovery.
Step 9 — Now is the time to evaluate your plan. Any staff member or volunteer who was working during the emergency or was present when it happened should be considered for involvement at this time. Observations will have been made by most regarding if the plan worked. Was all equipment available that was needed? Did everyone perform as trained? This step may be rather small for a simple emergency but still should be conducted. For larger events, committees may be formed to determine what parts of the entire plan worked. At this time, it is important to document everything and recommendations made for improvement.
Step 10 – For this step, all recommendations for improvements are forwarded to anyone assigned to rewrite certain components of the plan. This may be assigned to the organization’s risk manager, but most likely many individuals should be assigned to discuss how best to improve the plan and implement each one of the recommendations. Emergency personnel may be included to participate in this step, especially if they were not involved at the beginning. The plan is improved, or parts rewritten, and the process starts all over. Perhaps step 1 did not include the event or emergency that was just experienced. The rest of the plan will then need to be reviewed to make sure all changes necessary for what was missing is included in each step.
Writing a comprehensive risk management plan is a daunting task, but one that is necessary. A risk manager experienced in facility/event management safety should be tapped to head up the process, but management of safety and security requires the involvement of all. Risk management is an ongoing process and needs daily attention!
Dr. Susan Brown Foster is President of Sport Business Consulting, LLC and former professor of Risk Management in Sport at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida. Dr. Foster can be reached at drfoster@sportbusinessconsulting.com
