Why is it the organiser's job to do the risk assessment?

[IanD]

Eddie, you may not realise it, but you've just conducted a risk assessment.

And I, for one, agree with your conclusion: no action is required.

Tick the box and move on.

[RS]

[quote]Personally, I would rather an organiser warned me about dangerous untaped crags, adders, road crossings, etc etc, and where relevant took action to reduce my risk (resp. selective taping, giving advice on what to do / not to do, and erecting notice[/quote]s to drivers or having marshals).

dangerous untaped adders are the worst. How do you tape an adder anyway?

[Sunlit Forres]

On the risk assessment form for this weekend's event we've had to write down the phone number of the local A & E Dept. So if you fall and break your ankle you can rest assured that we'll be able to ring them and let them know you're coming so they can welcome you at reception.

While planning the courses, I've come across quite a few hazards out there in the woods - trip hazards, wet fallen trees that are slippy, rough ground, tree branches that might injure your eyes, cold, damp snow patches etc. Short of sending an army of JCBs and people with saws to cut off the lower branches, the only way of staying safe is for people to stick to the paths, walk very slowly, or stay in the car park. For health and safety reasons, orienteers coming to Darnaway this weekend are therefore recommended to stick to the white and yellow courses. Orienteers running off the tracks are strongly advised to keep their eyes on the ground ahead and not to try to read the map while running.

May you all run in safe forests.

[graeme]

On the risk assessment form for this weekend's event we've had to write down the phone number of the local A & E Dept.

For our Club Champs we arranged for a large A&E department to be built on the map. Anything less and you aren't trying

http://www.interlopers.routegadget.co.u ... 0&kieli=en

[IanD]

On the risk assessment form for this weekend's event we've had to write down the phone number of the local A & E Dept. So if you fall and break your ankle you can rest assured that we'll be able to ring them and let them know you're coming so they can welcome you at reception.

Can't see the point in knowing the phone number of A&E.

But can see a lot of point in something else that completing a risk assessment form has prompted me to do: knowing the location of the nearest A&E, checking that it is open on the event day (some of them close on Sundays ), and having printed directions of how to get there by car, ready to hand out to anyone needing to drive an injured person to A&E.

[greywolf]

While planning the courses, I've come across quite a few hazards out there in the woods - trip hazards, wet fallen trees that are slippy, rough ground, tree branches that might injure your eyes, cold, damp snow patches etc. Short of sending an army of JCBs and people with saws to cut off the lower branches, the only way of staying safe is for people to stick to the paths, walk very slowly, or stay in the car park. For health and safety reasons, orienteers coming to Darnaway this weekend are therefore recommended to stick to the white and yellow courses. Orienteers running off the tracks are strongly advised to keep their eyes on the ground ahead and not to try to read the map while running.

Indeed. But looking at the Darnaway map(s) you can also see: high cliffs, very steep banks, a fast flowing river, a couple of lakes and uncrossable marshes and a number of public roads. If you've been a responsible planner (and I'm sure you have) then you will have identified these hazards, and made sure that courses (especially for juniors) avoid them or where they are unavoidable (e.g. a road crossing) that you have taken appropriate measures to mitigate the risk: warnings to competitors at the start and on control descriptions, signage for motorists, etc. And I'm sure your controller, as part of their controlling duty, will have gone over these points with you, and then reported to the organiser.

Risk assessment is a perfectly sensible methodology, but the results get silly when those carrying it out either overrate the likelihood or severity of risk, or interpret "take reasonable precautions to mitigate risk" as meaning that they must attempt to eradicate it altogether (which is often driven by fear of litigation)...

And on the subject of b******t rules and regulations, i seem to remember that when you organised an event on the airbase last year, and invited a few civvys, I had to wait at the guardhouse for my escort, who was supposed to accompany me for my time on the base

[Sunlit Forres]

And on the subject of b******t rules and regulations, i seem to remember that when you organised an event on the airbase last year, and invited a few civvys, I had to wait at the guardhouse for my escort, who was supposed to accompany me for my time on the base

Can't be too careful who we let in these days Greywolf On the subject of risk, the H&S brigade on the base wouldn't let us map the large pine forest areas on the base due to trip hazards for competitors. So we mapped the technical site instead (the one that you ran round). Since then we've been embargoed from using parts of that due to the risk of running anywhere near potential aircraft operating surfaces (ie hangars).

Sensible risk assessment has its place, but in so many cases H&S has become a barrier to common sense.

[seabird]

I recall that the Authorities at Leeds University asked that we put warning notices at the top of flights of steps, despite the steps being clearly shown on the map!

At one stage they didn't want us running on steps at all.

Just as well they built the university in the 60s before H&S got out of hand. They would have to have forsaken their hillside site and moved to the valley bottom. But of course that would have risked us all drowning in the floods.

[redkite]

If anyone wants to read an article on what happened to one of our members when his leg met an adder on one of our moorland areas it can be found on page 4 of this edition of our newsletter http://www.swoc.org.uk/Platform/Dec%202008.pdf
One of the interesting side effects apparently was the need of the victim to urinate so the snake could follow its prey as it slowly died.

[Sunlit Forres]

Having just read the recent BOF board meeting minutes http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/downloads/documents/governance_minutes_board_07_07_10.pdfI thought I'd resurrect this one. Just when we were all getting used to doing risk assessments it seems that there's more to follow. To save you trawling through the link, here's the relevant paragraph.....

"MH noted that British Orienteering were to be left with no choice but to demand
training of those volunteers holding responsibility at every level of activity or event e.g.
coach, controller, organiser etc… Insurance requirements were making it a necessity
for official training of volunteers taking responsibility."

[Mrs H]

Gosh - and there was me considering a number of organisational offers on the table - and now I guess I'll have to say no to all of them (unless it's writing the report for the newspaper afterwards - at least I'm trained for that!)

It seems to be the insurance aspect which is causing all the grief these days - is there another direction the insurance aspect can be approached from?

[Scott]

Yeah, I had noticed that. It will be a big job to get all the existing event organisers suitably trained, and I have a horrible feeling that a lot of current organisers may well just give up organising events rather than attend a training course - here's hoping the "training" is in a manageable, easy-to-deliver format...

And it's not going to make it any easier to recruit new organisers if they have to go on a training course first - hopefully there will be some provision for qualified officials to mentor those who haven't been on a course yet at lower levels of event.

[Scott]

- is there another direction the insurance aspect can be approached from?

Does anyone have any experience of how registering/licensing races through the FRA works? I understand that the insurance cover somehow comes through UK Athletics,* but I don't know the details of the costs and paperwork/bureaucracy involved. I imagine that fell running has a similar set of risks to (non-urban) orienteering from an insurance point of view(?), so it would be interesting to see how their system compares to BOF's.

I know quite a few orienteering clubs put on the occasional fell race, and there are already some long orienteering-type races (the Phoenix?) which register with the FRA instead of with BOF, so hopefully somebody can enlighten us.

*Edit: I dimly recall some sort of excitement in the FRA three or four years ago about whether or not they should remain linked with UKA, but I can't now remember what it was all about

[RJ]

For organisers.....

Get some sort of online guidance, tutorials, best practice advice sheets.... along with a online test to check that you have understood the subject....

There used to be an organisers handbook available a number of years ago. It set out all those things you need to check. The organisers job is really just a 'work through' a checklist.

But giving up another Saturday to listen to a lecture and answer a test sheet. No!

[Scott]

RJ - I agree, that sort of DIY distance learning - with an short online test at the end - might be the easiest way forward if BOF need to introduce training/assessment for organisers. I guess it will depend on what satisfies the insurers' requirements