Risk assessment is a crucial part of event planning, as it helps you identify and mitigate potential hazards, threats, and uncertainties that could affect your event's success, safety, and reputation. Learn some of the best practices for conducting a risk assessment before, during, and after your event, and how to use a simple framework to guide you through the process.
Before you start your risk assessment, you need to have a clear understanding of your event's objectives, scope, and stakeholders. This will help you determine what kind of risks are relevant, how to prioritize them, and what to measure. For example, if your objective is to generate leads, you might focus on risks related to attendance, engagement, and follow-up. If your objective is to raise awareness, you might focus on risks related to media coverage, social media, and public perception.
Once you have defined your objectives, you need to identify and analyze the possible risks that could affect your event. You can use various methods to do this, such as brainstorming, surveys, checklists, or SWOT analysis. You should consider both internal and external risks, such as weather, venue, technology, security, health, legal, financial, or reputational. For each risk, you should assess its likelihood and impact, and assign a rating or score based on a scale of your choice.
We do not encourage the use of risk ratings or scales. A multiplicative model, for example, will assess the likelihood and impact of several different risk activities as if they were entirely independent. When the scores are aggregated, three different activities may be considered to be medium or low risks. However, if the activities are correlated and have an impact on one another, three low-to-medium risks could together produce one very high risk Hazards of low severity and high likelihood will receive the same risk value as hazards with high severity and low likelihood. Although the risk values may be the same, the response to these different hazards in terms of priority for correction may be very different (St John Holt, 1999)
After you have identified and analyzed the risks, you need to plan and implement mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate them. Consider both preventive and reactive measures, such as contingency plans, backup options, insurance, contracts, or emergency procedures. Assign roles and responsibilities to your team members, partners, and suppliers, and communicate clearly and regularly with them about the risk management plan.
The risk assessment should identify suitable control measures for reasonably foreseeable risks. Make sure you assign these control measures to companies or roles in companies so that it is clear on who is responsible to make sure that the controls are implemented. This can be further explained in detail within an Event Safety Management Plan, which all events should have as the backbone to demonstrating your event planning and management process.
During your event, you need to monitor and review the risks and the mitigation strategies, and adjust them as needed. Use tools and indicators to track the performance and outcomes of your event, such as feedback forms, surveys, analytics, or reports. Be prepared to handle any unexpected issues or crises that might arise and have a clear escalation and communication protocol in place.
Its really important that you are monitoring and responding to the plans throughout the event. For larger events there should be an event control that is logging all actions and ensuring that comms between agencies and companies is good. For smaller events this role could be mobile, but the logging of incidents and actions is still vitally important. We also like to have QR codes across site for incident reporting, so that they are taken to an online form that notifies key management when one is completed. This is highly effective at making sure everyone has ample opportunity to report issues, as they occur.
After your event, you need to evaluate and document the risks and the mitigation strategies, and learn from them. Conduct a post-event debrief with your team members, partners, and suppliers, and collect and analyze the data and feedback from your event. Document the lessons learned, best practices, and recommendations for future events, and share them with your stakeholders.
Conducting a risk assessment before, during, and after your event can be made easier by using a simple framework such as the SMART model. This model stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This means that your risk assessment should be defined precisely and quantified to measure its impact. Additionally, it should be realistic and attainable, aligned with your objectives and priorities, and have deadlines and milestones set for your risk management plan. Utilizing the SMART model can help structure your risk assessment process and make sure it is comprehensive, effective, and efficient.
A mi me funciona muy bien usar la Gestión de Riesgos del Project Management Institute. Es un modelo de gestión muy profesional con enfoque de proyectos como lo es propiamente un evento corporativo. Además, brinda una perspectiva cualitativa y cuantitativa de valoración de los riesgos; y, menciona la importancia de brindar atención a la evolución de los requisitos y supuestos del proyecto en todo su ciclo de vida.