Spectacular safety
Hyve ’ s group safety and security director , Corina Hedley , tells EN that heath and safety should be seen as an enabler to create spectacular events safely – and everyone including the CEO should be trained
With 17 years in the events industry behind her , including 10 at dmg events and five as group event operations director at Hyve Group plc , Corina Hedley now runs health safety and security operations across their global portfolio .
She says health and safety is integral to great events becoming the ‘ enabler ’ that has driven the industry ’ s recovery .
She says : “ I come from an ops background , so I want the weird and wonderful and spectacular events . I don ’ t want us to have boring , small , no double-decker shows .
“ Health and safety should be an enabler . That ’ s what I say to our operations teams and sales teams . Give me some time
Corina Hedley
and we can figure out how we do this crazy thing , or if we can ’ t do it , think of alternatives that are as equally good or as close to good as possible .
“ There is a mundane boring side to health and safety , of course there is , but I want the teams to feel confident that they can do whatever they want . They can basically do business and their exhibitors and their visitors and delegates and can do business safely and have a spectacular show and not have to worry about that .”
Different regulations and cultural considerations across four continents makes consistency difficult Hedley says , but as group event operations director , she overhauled Hyve ’ s approach and created a set of guidelines to govern safety standards for all their shows .
“ How we enable our operations teams is we give them best practice blueprints ,” she says . “ They are a bit like a minimum best practice guidance document with lots of different templates of all the things they could ever need , for them to go to as their kind of Bible .
“ We train all of the ops people to a certain point where they have the competency to assess and to manage . But then in each region wherever they go , they hire a safety officer or company that monitors the show floor for them . We try to keep the same level of service , the same experience , and the same planning in every country .”
October — 23