Designing a Safe and Functional Event Site

For the named organiser who designs the event site and accepts, in writing, the risk that remains in the site as designed.

What you will be able to do

• Name the person who still holds the duty for the site.
• Write a site design Operational and Tactical staff can run, with cover when either person is not there.
• Specify a site that can hold the programme, or record the shortfall as residual risk.
• Refuse a copied load table as a specification.
• Write down the conditions under which a location does not open.

What the chapters cover

• Who holds the site duty
• Specifying space, structures, power, water and waste
• Policy for when a site may open to the public
• Appointments this organisation makes
• What a building-control officer, licensing officer or coroner should find
• The design paper and the residual-risk statement

Thirteen chapters run from who holds the duty to the signed residual-risk statement, with thirteen quick-reference cards you may copy for use at your own event. Worked examples are composite illustrations, not accounts of real events.

Strategic titles are for the named organiser who designs the system across an event or a season and signs the risk that remains. OTAS Live publishes 30 handbooks across ten areas of event work, each at Operational, Tactical and Strategic level.

UK law, nation by nation

Law as checked in September 2026, with England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland named separately.