Here's how you can guarantee the safety and security of attendees at a live event.

A big aspect of Risk Assessment is seeking expert opinions from both the events team and local support groups such as first responders and venue personnel to align your event with best practices. By working with your local support network you can quickly identify their concerns as well as solutions or remedies effectively in the hope of avoiding danger to attendees. This will also go a long way in developing a strong rapport and confidence within their individual departments.

A threat, risk, and vulnerability assessment must be completed and be thorough, this should be priority #1. These assessments need to be completed enough in advance to allow for mitigation of issues found. What I’ve found helpful to keep this process standard and make sure you’re not missing anything is to work in concentric circles starting from the established perimeter and working inward, evaluating everything along the way. Note what issues found can be mitigated through existing resources and develop and source others based on additional needs in security gaps found.

The simple answer is YOU CAN’T. But, you can do everything you can to help prevent problems from arising. First you MUST know your environment/facility/location before starting any assessment. Next you determine what kind of crowd/attendees you may have; VIPs, regular folks and people who bring security. Next you get the threats to your facility and attendees from LEOs and their security requirements; ie medical, motorcades, parking, etc. Then you start planning how to accommodate everyone based of the threats. Training your facility personnel is a must so they respond to security detail requirements and situations seamlessly. Practice makes perfect. Plan for the worst and hope for the best..remember bad guys only have to get it right once!

It is also very important to stress to security personnel that the event is what people are attending and security is a necessary inconvenience so they should be courteous and treat all the “customers “ with respect.

Ensure that parents / minders of children/ minors have the facility to put ID wrist bands with contact details on their charges. There should always be enough security staff on site with enhanced DOB for dealing with minors.

Queue control is vital if there is a dedicated lane for enabled or elderly but it is not being used and the queues are getting long in other areas then use the lanes and bring those who need to use the lane to the front if required

A big practice that I always encourage when possible is to hold meetings with first responders and critical event personnel to go over event logistics and response plans. As events evolve throughout the planning process it is important to create a Feedback loop with your local support services to identify concerns on anything that may threaten the health and safety of attendees or hamper their response times.