We are thrilled to announce that we have had our outstanding work at the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, recognised and we’ve won an International Safety Award from the British Safety Council! For those of you that don’t know about this fantastically prestigious and complex project, let us tell you about it! Working in partnership with RDHS Management Consultants, a Somerset-based firm that we regularly team up with, we took responsibility for overseeing health and safety at the 68,000 capacity Baku Olympic Stadium and made sure the opening and closing ceremonies at the games was a smooth – and safe – operation.
As well as the 6,000 or so athletes from as far afield as Russia and Israel taking part in the ceremonies, the athletic events also saw regular crowds in excess of 25,000 attending throughout the 16-day duration of the games, so we had plenty of health and safety issues we needed to address, and measures we needed to put in place prior to the event.
The project was extra challenging as instead of the usual planning time for an event of this type and size – around five years – Harrier was given a minimal six months before the gates opened to visitors! Added to the tiny timescale, we were also working within a country and a culture that was, in many ways, still developing its health and safety standards. Practically, this meant that we found there were many areas where there was no overarching health and safety legislation in place. To combat this we introduced European standards and employed Health and Safety Executive (HSE) best practice to put new processes in place – and to add extra depth to our work, since the stadium was built specifically for the games, we had to develop many procedures from scratch.
With responsibility for a variety of areas, including crowd management, food and water hygiene and fire safety, the team also had to monitor weather conditions carefully- Baku often has very high winds to contend with so temporary structures and banners were a concern, and it can also be extremely hot, requiring adequate protection and water for games workforce.
We hope that, thanks to the hard work of our team, we have left a health and safety legacy which will benefit Azerbaijan in the long-term.
The award will be officially presented at a gala ceremony in London this May, and we’ll find out more about exactly why the judges thought our project was worthy of an International Safety Award then. However, what we do know is that British Safety Council Chairman, Mike Robinson, said we were, “examples of dedication and hard work” that ensured “the risk of injury and ill health is prevented”. We think this British Safety Council International Safety Award is certainly something to be proud of!