The Challenge
An Irish production agency was delivering a global brand’s leadership conference in Barcelona, across four venues in a single week.
Two regulatory worlds applied at once. The frameworks the team works to at home, and the Spanish legal regime governing the venues, the local contractors and the authorities.
The two-day conference and three evening events ran across a hotel, a marina and a hillside terrace, each with its own safety picture.
FUEL brought us in as their Event Safety partner. The headline scale was modest, around 100 guests, so the real test was holding one consistent, defensible safety standard across both regulatory frameworks and all four venues.
That had to happen in a jurisdiction where the working language was not the team’s first, and where the host venue had already had contractor documentation approved under its own local processes before we engaged.
The Solution
We embedded an Event Safety Advisor inside the FUEL team for the full build, live and break.
We worked inside the production team from the first day of build through to derig, roughly ten days on site as FUEL’s Event Safety partner, present for the decisions as they were made.
Delivering in Spain meant working across two regulatory frameworks at once. We held the team to the standards we apply at home while meeting the Spanish requirements covering the venues, the contractors and weather monitoring through the national AEMET system.
It helped that the Advisor we provided had working Spanish, which let safety conversations with local venue teams and contractors happen directly, without going through a translator. Delivering safety for international conferences is familiar ground for us, including TRA24.
We gathered and checked safety documentation for every contractor, reviewed the rigging and structural sign-offs, and completed a pre-opening safety check at each venue before guests arrived.
A Risk Assessment that stays live is worth far more than one signed off weeks earlier, so we ran dynamic assessments at the higher-risk spaces and kept safety live from the build, the exposed rooftop in particular.
Each venue was capped at 100 guests against emergency egress capacities that ran several times higher, a margin we build in deliberately.
The Result
The conference and all three evening events ran safely, and the plan held when it was tested.
Two moments showed the value of having safety embedded on the ground. During the rooftop build, rising wind left lighter lighting stands unstable. We flagged it to the Technical Director and the elements were weighted before they became a problem.
On the second day, a ladder at the marina venue failed when one of its two safety locks malfunctioned. It came down slowly, a contractor picked up a minor ankle knock, and we took the ladder out of service and checked every other ladder on the site that afternoon.
Both were caught, reported and closed out on the day, and neither disrupted the event, because someone whose only job was safety was embedded in the team.
FUEL continue to work with us, with further projects confirmed.
* we are restricted on what photographs we can utilise for this case study, given the global brand activity to which the case study relates, so please enjoy some pictures of the sites and considerations for us as the Safety Partner
Our Part
We were FUEL’s embedded Event Safety partner for a multi-venue international event.
We provide this kind of event safety consultancy at home and internationally.
Services we provided include:
- Embedded Event Safety Advisor across build, live and break
- Navigation of Spanish and Irish regulatory frameworks
- Contractor safety documentation gathering and review
- Rigging and structural sign-off review
- Dynamic Risk Assessments at higher-risk venues
- Emergency egress and capacity review across all venues
- Pre-opening safety checks for every event
- Adverse weather monitoring and wind action support
- On-site incident response and reporting
