I can still remember the first time I shadowed an event safety lead on a large venue walkthrough. We were inside the stadium, long before gates opened, with only the hum of equipment and the distant sound of crews setting up for the night’s event. The safety lead paused, looked out over the empty bowl, and said something that has stayed with me ever since:
“A risk assessment is just a story. The real work is deciding what you are going to do with it.”
Over the years, I’ve learned just how true that is. Events have become bigger, faster, more complex, and infinitely more reliant on tight coordination. As sure as fans will fill the stands at the Rose Bowl, or families will pack into the summer fairgrounds in Del Mar, each season brings challenges that demand sharper thinking and clearer communication. And risk assessments (when they’re done well) are one of the few tools that truly help teams anticipate what’s coming rather than react to what’s already happened.
But here’s the truth: most teams don’t struggle with identifying risks; they struggle with turning those insights into action. Below is a realistic look at how event and venue teams can transform their risk assessments into something that drives decisions and improves safety long before the first patrons arrive.
1. Start with a framework that reflects the real event.
Every event has its quirks: the choke point you can’t re-engineer, the gate everyone uses despite your best efforts, and so on. A meaningful risk assessment embraces these flaws rather than ignoring them.
A strong assessment outlines:
What could go wrong
How likely it is
What controls already exist
The framework matters because it forces teams to move past their gut feeling and into structured thinking.
2. Translate risks into actions you can actually do.
A bullet point report isn’t enough. “Crowd compression on the north concourse” only matters if it becomes:
If you can’t point to a specific, observable action tied to a risk, it isn’t actionable yet.
3. Assign owners, timelines, and dependencies.
One of the most common failure points we see across venue types is diffusion of responsibility. When everyone owns a task, no one owns it.
Every recommended action should have:
It doesn’t need to be complicated. It just needs to be explicit.
4. Bake risks into training, briefings, and staff touchpoints.
People absorb information when they hear it repeatedly through the right framework.
The key is building risk awareness into:
When teams know the why, they make better decisions under pressure.
5. Revisit your assessment throughout the season and use post-event reviews to fuel improvement.
Conditions change and some of the best insights come from the smallest moments:
Capture these details while they’re fresh because they’re often the difference between “we got lucky” and “we were prepared”
Looking Ahead
As events continue to evolve, risk assessments will matter more because they’re the connective tissue between planning and execution. The good news is that you don’t have to navigate this work alone. If strengthening your risk assessment process is on this year’s to-do list, reach out to us or another trusted partner to help translate your findings into operational improvements.