It’s a nippy winter night but you can feel the slight warmth in the air because of all the twinkling lights strung to announce the celebrations. Everywhere you look, festivities are in order. You have to go to your far off relative’s daughter’s wedding, while your son has bought tickets to a rock concert and your daughter has plans to go to the diwali mela. Yes, it’s that time of the year again. But what do the newspapers next day read? The stage at a wedding broke, riots broke out in a concert, and someone got caught in a naked wire at the diwali mela, but we barely even raise an eyebrow. So much for big party celebrations.
Why do big scale events in India always turn out to be even bigger failures? Is it because event management companies don’t care about the security of their attendees or do they just become careless and adopt the Great Indian Jugaad when it comes to maintaining security? Or should we blame it on the fact that we don’t value lives in our country? We got in talks with Avishkar Tendle, Managing Director at Natura Adventure Crew, to understand the current situation of large scale events in India. Are we really safe? EE finds out.
EE: Is India ready for staging adventure themed events? How do you see this industry in next five years?
I think India is at the cusp of getting big on adventure themed events, these sorts of events are already growing. Since customer engagement is the holy grail for all the BTL activities, adventure themed events are bound to be on the rise because of the ability of adventure activities to engage the audience.
The next few years are very critical in ensuring that Adventure stays on a safe and an upwardly progressing path, considering there are more number of events which have adventure fused into them from making the bride groom fly on to stage to doing bungee jumping at malls, it is equally important to make sure the number of accidents don’t increase just because the total number of events have increased.
EE: As communication is witnessing a shift towards events and creating experiences through them, what is the most important component of an event?
Customer engagement. As I said earlier customer engagement is the key and essential component of an event, ability to engage or the lack of it can make or break a brand, it’s about creating a high impact through an experiential medium, this trend is being seen in multiple places from experiential education to experiential marketing.
EE: How does the safety quotient vary with the nature of an event?
I don’t think safety quotient varies with the nature of events, what changes are the number of parameters to create a safe environment, if it’s a simple MICE event on the lawns of an resort, then the parameters will be highly limited. For example, considering if there is any possibility of injury to the client due to open electrical wires, slippery pathways etc. At the same time if it’s a massive event with 10,000 people then you have those many parameters to deal with to make an event safe. Based on an event you cannot say I can only strive for 60% of the safety level, it is critical to achieve 100% on all the parameters irrespective of how many parameters are present.
EE: How is safety in indoor shows different from safety in outdoor adventure events?
It varies a lot, whenever we talk outdoor’s we have to take into account weather conditions, and any other factors which might disrupt the event. Is it going to be raining? Is it going to be windy? What wind zone does my venue come into? Is my structure prepared to handle those wind and rain conditions if it were to occur? How am I protecting the audience in case of any calamity? Am I equipped to handle stampede? Is my emergency evacuation plan ready? Is there a person who is going to take that call of evacuation?
These are the questions we need to ask ourselves when we are into the midst of organizing an event.
At the same time Indoor safety is completely different. Are we prepared in case of a fire emergency? Can we handle crowd properly? Are there more people inside the venue than there are supposed to be? etc.
EE: How critical is safety addresal? Are we equipped to handle the safety needs of events?
Does anyone want bad press because some participant got injured while taking part in their brand’s activity? By default safety is the most critical aspect of an event, whether it is an adventure themed event or not. Even a music concert should have safety as a critical aspect. Is the truss erected safely? Is there proper crowd management? What happens in case of fire? etc.
When it comes to adventure events, safety becomes a non-negotiable aspect. Is the adventure operator qualified? What experience does he have? Who are the people managing that activity? Are they qualified? What is the equipment being used? Is it certified? Is there a log of usage of that equipment?
All these questions are necessary and important. These questions asked at the right place at the right time are likely to avert a major incident.
EE: Please share the safety drills and mandates followed by you for ads and films? How do you train your teams to meet 100% safety assurance?
We at Natura are very paranoid about safety. We follow the dictate of “when in doubt don’t do it, or change it”. Every activity that we do, whether it is an adventure activity or an aerial performance, we will only go ahead if we are convinced that it is safe. There is always a site Manager on our events. That person is single handedly responsible for the safety of that activity. He has a checklist in his hand, every time before our system is engaged, he goes through it one by one and checks if everything is in place and ready to go.
During rigging we change the systems constantly if we think there is a small possibility of risk. We change it till the time we are convinced at the risk of delaying the setup and eating into the rehearsal time. It is always better to be slightly delayed than being sorry. We only use certified equipment and keep an extensive usage logs of that equipment. So that we know if we need to replace something and when to do it. We always have a backup independent system to our main system, incase our main system fails, our backup swings into an action and avoids the accident. We always have a person certified as an internationally trained First Aider on all our programmes and we make sure all the in-house team is re-certified every two years (check out Wilderness Advance First Aid course curriculums that we attend – http://www.nols.edu/wmi/.
EE: What does it take to have a good adventure infrastructure? Does it currently exist in India?
Adventure Infrastructure is almost nonexistent in India, we do not have paramedic or rescue teams to jump into action in case of a calamity, even our urban ambulances are not very well equipped, our disaster management teams are a national joke, we don’t have a set of protocols and procedures in place for adventure nor do we have an audit team that can govern these policies. Currently the adventure tour operators of Maharashtra Association and adventure tour operators of India are working on such principles to be put into place but on the flip side we have innumerable destination alternatives when it comes to adventures venues. At the end of the day we have the mighty Himalayas which attract thousands of foreigners, and there are few operators who specifically cater to them and adhere to stringent international standards but those constitute about 1% of the total adventure operators.
EE: What are the challenges in delivering adventure content in India?
Cost is the major challenge, since people right now do not realize the sort of effort that goes into making adventure systems safe. Right now, everyone wants to involve adventure content into their event, but when it comes to paying for it, everyone wants it at lower costs, and costs are always reduced at the expense of safety.Safety is treated as an add on to an event and only taken into consideration under few circumstances e.g. when the client has larger budgets or when the client has asked for it specifically or the event manager has had a past incident and does not want that to happen again. If being safe is treated as a non-compromisable aspect of an event then the costs should be built into the budget.
EE: At Natura, what is your approach to execute, conceptualize and manage adventure theme events?
It depends on what service is requested from us by the event management companies. We usually sit down with the event management company to understand the client’s brief and the intention behind the event. Based on the intention we come up with an entire concept of the event, and infuse different adventure activities which align with the event. At times we even create new activities to achieve the engagement. Our operations team then gets into action and starts the preparation for the event, recon trips are done, rigging plans are created, team is finalized, and show flow is created all leading up to the setup day. Based on our experience of managing adventure themed events, we have devised another approach in which we deploy our proprietary design of the Adventure Challenge tower, which houses 6-8 adventure activities in a mere space of 50ft X 50ft, This tower has turned out to be a perfect product for the event managers wherein they can provide engagement of 6-8 adventure activities in the smallest space possible thus bringing Adventure to your doorstep in the urban environment. (www.adventurechallengetower.co.in)
EE: How do you manage the regular pressures of conventional event management and blend in a high degree of safety control in it?
It’s a constant tightrope walk for us, traditionally we are always taught to take as much time as possible when you are executing adventure activities. This is where Natura is very unique, since we understand the time pressures in conventional events; we have optimized our operations in a way where we achieve efficiency during setup and execution and at the same avoiding any compromise on the safety. There is a strong documentation culture and a log which everyone needs to compulsorily adhere to during an event, these internal checklists and systems enable us to a achieve high degree of safety at our events.
