Risk Assessment

[Kale_10]

Hi, Probably a question with a simple answer, but should a visiting show to a theatre provide there own risk assessment

 

thanks

[Shez]

Yes. Your show is unique so there will be potential risks in there that won't fall under any venue's generic assessment.

[Jivemaster]

Your show is as unique as the performance space, so you can risk assess the performance but need to co-operate with each venue to risk assess the get in and out. It's likely that you can leave the venue to RA the audience and bar and catering in their venue, but check with them first.

[nuttytechy]

Yes. It should be provided with the Tech Rider. Every show is unique and will carry some sort of risk of some sort unless its a one man show with a blank box stage but even that could carry a risk ** laughs out loud **.

 

Bare in mind that some risk assessments may be a complete joke. A show which we received recently... Well their Risk Assessment had myself and the SM in stitches because it looked like they didn't think things through properly. I will give some examples of why I and the SM thought they got quite a bit wrong.

 

Low Risk... Unloading Vehicle and transporting set, props costumes to stage.......

Now bare in mind they do not know the venue so won't know the get in and get out points etc. Won't know the layout. Are there any stairs ?? Even when they ask for information from the theatre, they will not know what it is like until they arrive.

 

Low Risk... The use of oversized shoes..........

So acting with oversized shoes could cause them to trip. If the performer has not had much rehearsal time in the shoes etc.

 

 

 

Medium Risk. The use of a fake mobile phone. It could cause bruising or tripping.... These were exact words in their risk assessment.

 

Medium Risk. The use of a rubber Duck. Same again. Tripping and bruising.

 

After reading their risk assessment, I was like wtf because there is a greater chance for injury from unloading a vehicle and performing on stage with oversized shoes than there is with a fake mobile phone or a rubber duck which were being used a props.

 

I won't mention which theatre company it was but whoever wrote out their risk assessment told myself and the SM that something was wrong. When you receive a Risk assessment then read it yourself and just think logically because as you can see from the examples I have given then the theatre company may not have thought things through properly.

[paulears]

I think the real problem is that some people just can't actually produce the things. I've never understood why, but maybe they don't have the imagination required? I don't mean that sarcastically, but most of us have that ability to see into the future a little and from looking at a typical lorry load of kit, predict exactly what types of injuries could occur, and prioritise them. The mobile phone in the example probably has done this in the past, hence it's a known risk and they include it. The sharp knife in the laundry basket doesn't;t ring alarms until it cuts somebody - then gets looked at.

 

Every panto I have a risk assessment pad with more pages than the script - but I always end up needing new ones. It's quite common for people doing my job at other venues, doing the same show, to phone me up and ask if I've done a risk assessment for X - this year was a roller skating Tinkerbell. I just send them mine. I know these people and they are not dim - they just struggle with 'what if' type questions.

 

 

At my venue I have NEVER had a risk assessment with a rider, and in many cases, the riders we get have never even been seen by the production team who arrive. This often raises smiles when they suddenly realise why they have two risers with handrails, that they don't use because they are ugly - everyone gives us those, they say. I show them the rider and they say they've never seen that document in their lives!

[nuttytechy]

Paul you are totally right. It can be a cast member who writes out a Risk Assessment. We do more of the smaller performances with a max of 5 cast members give or take a few so they share the other roles and do most of the other jobs themselves.

 

They do look in the past of what has happened and prioritise that as a risk but like you said a sharp knife in a basket would be a low risk. When I write out a risk assessment then I will jot down notes and go onto the stage with the props etc and do a run through with what could happen then categorise them whether they are high, medium or low. I am not overly generous with the ratings unless there are child present for any scenes as they can be unpredictable for stage fright etc.

 

When we send out the theatre info we always ask for a risk assessment so we can prepare for any issues which could arise on the date of the performance/s and like you mentioned about the Riders ** laughs out loud ** We get a lot of we have never seen that before or that is standard and we send it to everyone. 1 rider I had this year was very backwards too. They asked for certain cables ready for them but when it came to the get-in I had to redo some cables as they made a mistake in their rider and there was also a mention that they only wanted 6 LX cues. In the end they had 50 odd LX cues. Total PITA that was.

[pmiller056]

It does take training and experience to produce useful risk assessments.

 

Many people are asked to do risk assessments for whatever activity, having never seen one previously. Most of these are very poor, quite simply because the person tasked with the job has no idea what is required, useful or acceptable. After a lot of unhappiness and noise from me, my employer did send me on a (short) risk assesment training course which was useful. When working with someone someone chucked in at the deep end, well out of their comfort zone, I've found the simplest thing to do is to rename it a 'Hazards and consequences assessment'. This tends to produce something more useful....

 

[Junior8]

It probably doesn't need saying here but the Dreamspace judgement did nake clear that RAs cannot be simply taken on trust and filed away by a venue/organiser/responsible person. You do need to at least read them and ask any questions that occur to you.

[kerry davies]

RAs are live, active, organic documents and if they are filed away are worth less than had they never existed. Just one example could be that you assess the risk of work at height as requiring tower scaffold rather than ladders. That introduces the possibility of towers blocking access and egress routes and creating more falling hazards over a wider area so the original RA has changed.

 

That is why the answer to the OP is, yes. Of course you need to create your own RA because your very presence changes the hazards and risks at each venue. If you are so reckless as to bring in a set, cabling, pyro or even, heaven forfend, young people then it becomes essential.

 

The HSE templates and examples show that reams are unnecessary and even they can be condensed. I worked hard to reduce mine to essentials because I believe that they are not to cover every minuscule item in detail but to show that you have considered the hazards and risks of each of those minuscule items.

[Jivemaster]

I once saw the RA for a major firework show on the Thames in London. Two Pages of A4 brought all the salient points to the fore. Once you have hundreds of pages it's a paperweight.

[sandall]

I unashamedly cribbed my RA template from the BBC, who know more about safety & getting the paperwork right than most. Basically it's a single-sheet spreadsheet with 5 columns -

 

1/. WHAT could cause HARM?, 2/. WHO might be harmed & HOW?, 3/. Exising RISK (High/Medium/Low), 4/. CONTROL MEASURES (what do you do to stop these people being harmed?), & 5/. WHO is responsible for the necessary control, i.e. where the buck stops..

 

To work out the RISK they use a 5x5 matrix. One axis is SEVERITY of Harm (1 = Negligible, 5 = long-term disability or death). The other is LIKELIHOOD of that harm happening (from 1 = Freak Event, through Unlikely, Unusual but Foreseeable, Easily Foreseeable, & 5 = Common Occurrence).

 

Multiply the 2 together. 6 or below is classed as Low Risk, 7 - 10 as Medium Risk & 11 - 25 as High Risk. If anything comes out as High Risk you just don't do it. Anything Medium Risk, such as safely-handled electricity, requires constant monitoring.

 

The layout is very good for flagging up all the things that don't initially seem important, but just might see you in court.

[Roderick]

The BBC template follows the basics as set-out in ISO 31000:2018, the international standard for risk management.

It works well because it is simple and straight forward and most importantly, it makes sense.

The bad thing is that you have to buy the Standard something I believe is plain wrong, such information ought to be available freely.

 

A very common mistake people make is including everything they dream up, can a teabag in the Green Room be a choking hazard, in the misguided assumption that more is better. It does the reverse, if you read a RA where at Page 12 you still haven't hit anything relevant you'll probably give up and miss the high risks mentioned on Page 13. The purpose of a risk assessment is to prioritise which areas need attention, not to produce pointless paperwork.

 

A few things to keep in mind when writing risk assessments:

- Sort risks by level, 'Extreme' first, 'Low' last, that way you have everything that needs attention together.

- Group risks by time and/or department. Loading / unloading trucks is one heading, Rigging Truss another. Or look at it as 'lighting', 'sound', 'sets', 'wardrobe'. That way you can communicate the risks directly to the people involved and you don't bore them with information irrelevant for their job.

 

The basic structure:

 

And an example of a risk matrix

http://www.adornpixels.com/cdn/2/2016/693/management-risk-assessment-matrix_143763.jpg

[sandall]

A couple of points on that -

 

I totally agree about charging for Standards (especially the exorbitant prices charged by the IET over here), but while the Standard documents may be copyright the methodology isn't. While the ISO 31000 Overview layout is so confusing as to be almost meaningless, the concept of the Risk Matrix is just common sense, & while different authors will use slightly different wording they should all come up with the same risk factors.

 

If your RA runs to even 12 pages you are either trying to cover too much ground in one document or you have lost the plot (you've almost certainly lost your readers !!).

 

While it may be convenient to group your risks by task or department, this should ONLY be done once you have identified What might cause harm & Who might be harmed, otherwise there is a chance of potential hazards slipping through the cracks (they may get identified for one group carrying out a task, but missed for another group carrying out a similar task) - if you identify even a single Critical or High risk you really need to rethink your project.

 

As mentioned elsewhere - if you Keep It Simple, people might not only read (rather than skim & file) your RA, they might understand the implications of what you have written, which is surely what it's all about.

[paulears]

I'm not certain maths can be very handy in calculating 'scores' - above we have linear and logarithmic scales, but neither cope with the whole.

 

 

If you have a risk assessment for a circus, or illusion act compared to a straight play in a standing set with the usual couple of entrances and exits - the numeric system shows the circus/illusion act to be far more dangerous - things happening in the air and flaming torches and spikes and the danger of not just injury but death, make it more dangerous. However - the normal working practices of these 'dangerous' areas often feature safety as the prime consideration. Well designed, well implemented and monitored/controlled. The simple set could have very dangerous and risky elements, but not have them identified at all - because it is simple. How often do we see people doing patently dangerous processes that make us really concerned, yet discover nobody even aware how dangerous they are.

 

Numbers seem a curious manner to denote seriousness of the risk - generating a score, but for what purpose?

[sandall]

The numbers on that particular example seemed to be aimed at assessing commercial risk (a whole other can of worms) rather than safety of life, so merely add a layer of confusion to a basically simple concept. The "Who, What & How?" approach might be too simplistic for say your circus (the Control Measures column might be a bit full), but would seem to be a good approach for tackling "My first Risk Assessment", especially for any event where the public is involved.