As an event organiser it’s your responsibility to manage work health and safety risks. Good planning and organisation is essential to keep you, your workers and the public safe. The level of detail in your planning depends on the size and complexity of your event.

Risk management

Event organisers must identify and manage hazards. Managing the risks is key to putting on an event that is both safe and enjoyable.

To get started you need to know what work may cause injury. Work health and safety contractors, the local council and our free Advisory Service are some of the resources that can assist in the planning process.

As the event organiser, it is your responsibility to manage the process before, during and after the event to make sure that all is going smoothly.

Communication with your workers is a great way to confirm you have thought of all risks. To ensure they know safety is your main priority:

  • provide them with easy to understand information
  • train and supervise your workers, volunteers and contractors
  • give clear instructions on what to do
    • in an emergency
    • in extreme weather conditions, such as strong winds or hot weather
    • if someone is away
    • if someone is injured
  • provide good working conditions – fresh drinking water, clean washing and eating areas, first aid, clean toilets
  • ensure they use the appropriate equipment for manual tasks, such as trolleys and sack trucks to move equipment safely
  • encourage them to report any equipment errors and fix these straight away.

Talk to your contractors if your event includes catering, amusement rides, fireworks, or construction such as staging and tents. Check that workers can carry out the work safely, especially when it comes to:

  • electrical equipment, lights and leads
  • Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) containers and stoves
  • manual tasks, especially for bump in/bump out
  • operation and supervision of rides
  • relevant training, permissions and licences.

Other things you may need to think about include:

  • getting crowds and equipment in and out of the event safely
  • signage and traffic flow
  • safety zones where the public cannot enter
  • how you communicate at the event, such as phones, two-way radio, loudspeaker
  • regular inspections of the event site.

Small and medium sized community events

Safe events are well planned events – nothing should be left to chance. A good planning processes can identify potential hazards, determine risk, and then eliminate or minimise their impact.

The Event Safety Management Information series is designed for those involved in planning, organising and implementing small to medium sized community events, and to assist organisers in ensuring they have safe management systems in place.

Public events notification

While we do not approve public events, we can provide organisers with safety advice on:

  • registered amusement devices
  • dangerous goods over the licensable quantities, such as 250kg or more of LPG, 120L or more of petrol
  • fireworks
  • large marquees, over 6m in length
  • stages or grandstands that require scaffolding.

If you would like our help with your upcoming event, please complete and submit our Public events assessment checklist at least 4 weeks prior to the event.

Safety inspections

Our work health and safety inspectors are commonly involved in community events.

For large-scale community events such as the Adelaide 500, Royal Adelaide Show and music festivals, we will:

  • conduct pre-event audits and site inspections
  • liaise with organisers/owners before and during the events
  • make proactive visits throughout the event process.

Our focus will be to ensure:

Further information

Food catering

Inflatable amusement devices

Contractors

Primary duty of care

Workers