Access denied... Venue's own Risk Assessment documentation

[TheatreStageGuy]

Has anyone experienced a venue refusing to share Risk assessment documentation/ procedure or policy docs? - I'm trying to put together a risk assessment for a project going into a specific venue, but they refuse to share any documentation about the space. Am I wrong here in expecting those to be available? [whether in terms of best practice or legal obligation- I'm interested in other people's experience/understanding of this] ...  possibly a GDPR thing? I would have thought these things were best shared with anyone who had cause/need to use them. 

 

[mac.calder]

If they require you to follow their policies and procedures, one would think it would be in their best interest to share.

I only spent about a year as a tech manager of a receiving house, but my standard "welcome packet" to visiting shows included a 'tick and flick' risk assessment (ie if you tick no to all of these, I am not going to ask to see your RA and pass it by our OH&S committee), a copy of our policies, the venue information and a bunch of other more admin things. 

I will note - we did not have a boilerplate show risk assessment to share. What we did have was library of safe method work statements relating to a range of common tasks. Basically, if you ticked no to our tick and flick questionnaire, our SWMS should cover you.

. If they are a receiving house with no staff and no infrastructure, they may entirely rely on the visiting companies. Is this the right thing to do... no... Can I foresee some venues being run that way... yep.

[TheatreStageGuy]

Thanks for the reply. I like that idea of the welcome packet that goes beyond just the mission statement/artistic vision blurb.

They haven't given a reason for not sharing, which I find perplexing. As you said- I also wouldn't expect a show RA, as the peculiarities of the set/installation will be specific to my project- but their fire evacuation plan, features and attributes of their building, house rig, weight limits, etc would surely have to come from them- not me completing a visit, or having to work out safe working loads based on the truss type, chain hoist data of the house equipment- that seems like something they should be able to provide to me as a document upfront.   

[mac.calder]

You can't even get weight limits? That's a BIG red flag... as you can't just eyeball motors and go "Yep, I got x SWL here..." - you pay good money for an engineer to do that stuff...  I would also expect at bare minimum a technical specification of the space detailing all those lovely important details, numbers and figures be made available well before even booking the venue...

Are they a "proper" venue? or are they a local community hall type thing where you are dealing with the front desk person for the shire council who also takes bookings for all the multipurpose halls etc - and the extent of their event management is usually collecting the 50 quid for the hall hire and pointing out where the tea urn is?

[TheatreStageGuy]

Terrifyingly- its a pretty sizeable venue [receiving house] with a fairly large truss, and a 'knowledgable and experienced' [lazy] technical manager in post.

It's one of those venues where they'd rather you just have a floor package, and don't touch the overhead rig at all [TM is from small bands background/ Me, and this project is Theatre production- full 'bells and whistles' [no actual whistles or bells though] 

 

 

 

[kerry davies]

This sounds incredible if I understand you right. 

The law states that employers must inform employees or self employed persons or the employees of other employers who share their workspace of all risks, preventive and protective measures, procedures etc and enable the self employed and the employees of other employers sharing the same workspace to carry out their own obligations under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Same with LOLER. If a business or organisation undertakes lifting operations or is involved in providing lifting equipment for others to use, they must manage and control the risks to avoid any injury or damage. That obviously includes providing those others with the information required to use the lifting equipment safely.

If they refuse to share their fire evacuation plan with you as an incoming company then you need to seriously consider not using them and referring all this to the relevant licensing authority. Are they expecting to give every member of your group a rigorous and extensive induction course or what?

[Ynot]

Speaking from a volunteer run community theatre PoV, this is what we publish to our users, whether they be old friends or newcomers...

Policies & Procedures - The Abbey Theatre

[dosxuk]

Does the venue know and have confirmed that you are part of a visiting production?

I've heard of similar stories in the past where such documentation is only available to those directly associated with a production with a booking for that venue - especially when people have used a personal email addresses with no visible connection to a booking. Normally solved by a known contact for the production sending a "xxx - abc@xyz.tld - is our production manager, can you provide him with access to your documentation" type message to the venue.

[mac.calder]

The "thing" is that none of the information that is needed is in any way commercially sensitive, so restricting its access is ridiculous.

What? Another venue might copy your risk assessment? Aaaand... it's not a competition. A competing venue might match the same lx desk as you? As if you are not already sharing techs and they have access to that information anyway?

Sometimes there is reason not to publicise information ... but this is just gatekeeping for the sake of it. 

[Stuart91]

4 hours ago, mac.calder said:

What? Another venue might copy your risk assessment? Aaaand... it's not a competition.

I kinda fell foul of that when we were starting out. (Early 2000s) Landed a bigger gig that we were used to, and had to provide an RA to the venue for the first time.

So I got one from a bigger company that we were friendly with. Tweaked it to suit what we were doing and handed it on to our customer. 

Customer handed it to their contact at the venue. It turned out he had written the original document for that other company in his previous employment there. 

Our customer, quick as a flash, said "Ah, at least we know they're following best practice!" 

[kerry davies]

I find it hilarious that anyone should be concerned about the copying of RA's when HSE provide pro-formas and detailed examples to all and sundry. At least Stuart "tweaked it" to his purposes, I have seen some that were obviously and blatantly cut'n'pasted without being read.

[sunray]

1 hour ago, kerry davies said:

I find it hilarious that anyone should be concerned about the copying of RA's when HSE provide pro-formas and detailed examples to all and sundry. At least Stuart "tweaked it" to his purposes, I have seen some that were obviously and blatantly cut'n'pasted without being read.

My employer drew up a RA for me ( as a SE subby) to go into a property for AV work and sent it directly to the venue. Some 10 years later a different company did the same thing for a 3 month BMS contract. So totally different companies for totally different work.

The contracts manager pulled the previous RA, they were word for word identical apart from the names & dates etc.

[Stuart91]

12 hours ago, kerry davies said:

I find it hilarious that anyone should be concerned about the copying of RA's when HSE provide pro-formas and detailed examples to all and sundry. At least Stuart "tweaked it" to his purposes, I have seen some that were obviously and blatantly cut'n'pasted without being read.

With my first attempt, I was at least starting with something written for our industry, rather than a completely generic template.

I'm pretty sure that 90%+ of the RMAs I write aren't actually read by the people I submit them to, just put on file somewhere and the requisite box ticked. 

I've always been tempted to slip in something outrageous (risk of Godzilla attack etc.) and see if anyone pulls me up on it. 

[ImagineerTom]

We do this will all our RA's and it never gets mentioned- at christmas there's always things like "this event proves so amazingly Christmassy it confuses santa into delivering all presents early" and "zombie snowman invasion" with appropriate recommended preventative measures.

[Stuart91]

Someone I know would bury instructions in his booking contract: "Send me an email with Discount as the subject line to get £50 off your invoice"

Very few customers took him up on it, he reckoned it was worth the occasional £50 to know who hadn't read the contract fully.