The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Key Elements to Safe and Efficient Sports and Special Event Management Planning | BTS #42

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

How to practically apply principals from the Texas A&M Engineering Extension (TEEX) MGT 404: Sports and Special Event Management course. *Don't be too comfortable with your planned events.

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we'll get started with Between the Slides in 3, 2, 1. Welcome to Between the Slides, episode 42. I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. This episode is titled, When You're Comfortable with an Event, Don't Be. What do I mean by that? We've talked about contingency planning in episode 40, complex incidents in episode 33. In this one, we're going to go over the Texas A&M and Engineering Extension TEKS course, sports and special events incident management.

And I'm going to cover some of the main topics that they list on their website. I took this course in 2013. I actually had a thought for a different episode about status check and recorders, which I may focus on again. If you recall, it goes status check and recorder, resource unit leader, planning section chief, and on up the chain. And thought, you know what, my examples and what I'll use in this, since it is a special event and kind of a sport thing, is a hotter balloon incident that I was involved in. I happened to have taken this course the year before I was on the incident manager team. I wasn't on the

planning team. I was actually in one of the other balloons when an accident happened to fire on another balloon. Not a great day. And so we'll give some ideas with that as an example. A bit of a personal touch on this one. As for sure, it has impacted me in my life since then and my wife and other folks that were involved. And just like this podcast with this episode, I want to help others that are planning maybe the same kind of event or similar special events. And things to consider and things that I've considered when I've done special events and sporting. So thank you all very much for coming in. We'll go through the main bullets that are listed on the TEEX site.

So it's TEEX Management or MGT404 if you want to look it up. Google it. You can get them to come to your locality a lot of times or you can go to one. It's free. For those of you that have taken TEEX courses, you'll understand that it's a great opportunity. So the first of these is to identify event management stakeholders and partner relationships as they relate to sports and special events management. So we've talked about this, we've talked about that in episode 40, contingency plans, as far as command coordinating with the event sponsors. So there's number one, right, The event sponsors. If you're having a sporting event or a special event, particularly if it's a big

name sporting event, like a major league event or a college or even high school, but particularly the ones that have brands associated with them, those event sponsors are going to be pretty intricately involved and should be. And that's usually, you know, pretty typical. Same for a local festival, a local sport event, something like that. The event organizers, you know, so who's actually coordinating the event, who's running the shows, coordinating the planning, who's putting together the press, all the different elements of the incident command system, incident management, as we know it, but also some of maybe kind of the public sector civilian stuff, public safety for sure, right? If you're going to have a sport or special event, they absolutely have to be involved. And by that, I mean, all of public safety that should be there,

police, fire, EMS primarily, certainly 911 dispatch. If you're going to have that incident communication center or ICC, and even if you're not going to have them on site, they need to know because as we talked about in episode 40, and we'll touch on again, because again, communicate, communicate, communicate. You need to know that your lifeline through the radio to everyone else is involved and they know the plan. You don't just surprise them with, hey, here's what's going on, because that's not fair and it's not very efficient. Local government. So certainly if you have a big enough event, whether it's a regular one, a new one, one you've had for years, local government has interest, right? It brings in revenue. There's a lot of people coming in.

There's more traffic. You might get complaints from local folks because there's more traffic if it's a new event or whatever it is. But make sure you reach out to local government if you're part of the incident management team or the special event or special, you know, sports management team. If you're not an official IMT or if you're local or regional doing this and make sure they're involved. Make sure participants know about the event, you know, the what ifs, the, you know, what if it's a great day? Where are we going to go? What's the flight pattern, you know, for the event of a balloon thing with a race, you know, how many laps, all that kind of stuff. Usually participants that go to places, unless it's something they haven't done before, will have an idea. So like, you know, football, baseball, NASCAR, those kind of things. Participants will know the participants there being, you know, the drivers, the players, those kind of things. Do they know what's going to happen?

Do they get briefed on safety issues or storms or something like that? Are they just going to be told when it happens? For something like the balloon festivals that I went to, participants are the crews of the balloon, the folks that are getting the rides on the balloon. Do they know what's going on, what happens, what if? That's a big thing, too. And are they involved in the planning at all? And, again, we'll jump back into that when we get to some of the other stuff because they're good in this as well about talking about, hey, what if you have an incident within the event?

And the local public, does the public know what are the hours, where is it going to be happening? And I was fortunate in my area, a lot of folks, a lot of big events did this. So there should not have been a lot of surprises. There's always folks that call and say, I had no idea. I'm just trying to get to and from work when there's been ads on the news for two weeks or a month or however long, or it's something that's been there for years, but that's going to happen. So there's probably more, uh, you know, wouldn't mind hearing more things from you all on, uh, between the slides.com or the Facebook page. Um, that'd be cool. Um, so the second bullet is to identify potential risks to sports and special events and develop mitigation strategies that could lessen or alleviate the impact of the risks, right? So a risk is something that we think could happen beforehand, and this is,

also carries over to the project management world, so you have risks that you think could happen, and then if they do happen, they become issues you have to manage, whereas in this world, sports and special events, what is a risk to this event? What is a risk that could happen? And then next phases we'll get into okay something happened then what so an example and again I'm

gonna use the balloon because I'm intimately familiar with it from being a participant so what could happen and you know not being a balloon expert or anything what if they lose power so run out of gas in the tank tank, um, you're losing power. You're going to have to land somewhere. It's not the course you wanted to do. What are we going to do about that? How are we going to find folks? Where are we going to go? What's the terrain look like? And, and, you know, pilots study all that kind of stuff. The only pilot like thing I had is a, and my, um, UAS or unmanned aerial system or drone license. Um, so we studied some of that kind of stuff. So thinking about, you know, what if you're losing power?

What are the contingencies in the balloon pilots? You know, I think know some of that. They have the, or a lot of it really. Backup tanks, all that kind of stuff. What if you do have a power line strike? What if there's a fire? Then what? Do you have time to react?

Those kind of things. And not just for the folks on the balloon, but they should know, right? So what if, and there may be zero you could do about it, but you know, what's the briefing, safety briefing? What if there's a passenger medical emergency? So what if someone has a heart attack? They get up there, they're scared, like, oh my God, chest pain, right? Where are you going to go? I don't think you're going to be able to fly the balloon right to the hospital. That would be something, wouldn't it? But what are you going to do, right? So that's another

contingency. Is there an AED on the balloons? Is there any equipment on the balloons? Is that unsafe because you've got gas and that AED is electric, right? That's a whole thing. Are the pilots trained in CPR? You know what's going on there. So there's so many variables with medical emergency. It could be diabetes, something like that. Um, what if you just have a hard landing? What if it's windy? You got to get down, you hit hard. Um, then what, you know, folks can get hurt. I actually had to land hard, um, after the accident happened in the power line collision that happened during the festival that I was at and the fire. And so that we didn't track in the same direction, we hard landed. So we hit the ground once, bumped a little bit, hit the ground again, boom, tipped over, skinned up knees,

shaken up, obviously, from what had already happened with balloon fire and seeing what happened to the folks there. And then we hard land. So then what? So now, you know, balloons come down in the trees. People get scraped up. If it's on a flat surface, if it's on a road, you know, just how do you, how do you handle that? How do you mentally prepare for that? High winds. What if you're blown way off course, how are we going to get those folks back, track them that could lead to

other things we've already talked about. So you kind of get the gist of it. There's, there's plenty more stuff that could happen, but part of what should happen just like contingency planning is evaluating the risks. So those are very linked. You could almost kind of interchange those. But again, the risk is, okay, what are risks to this? For the event itself, what's the risk that nobody shows up, right? And then we don't go anywhere. What are the risks for weather, right?

So what if it's canceled one day and then we're going to have to change to the next weekend or the next day or whatever? Just things to think about there. And you're going to have to work with other stakeholders we mentioned to decide what do we do if any of these pre-event things happen like the weather or we don't have a lot of attendance or something like that. So just some things to consider in your risk bucket there. The third bullet is examine the event planning process and identify event planning considerations, including the importance of event planning and developing and implementing an event action plan. So if you've listened to this podcast before or if this is your first time, if you go back to episodes two through six, we cover the very basic incident command through the O-305 kind of bootcamp

one-wing incident management class. We've definitely talked about this and I believe there's a process we can all use for special event planning, the planning P process, right? So that's the all hazards planning process. It should be used for every special event, sporting event, right? It absolutely should.

It's the standard. Can there be variations off of it or to it? Yes. Got to hit those foundational four, right? Every special event or incident, a sporting event should be run through objectives with an org chart and everybody knows who's who. The resources are coordinated. We're all communicating,

but got to follow the planning P. No one is too special by patch, badge, or logo to participate in that. And if they are, that's when you need to reach out to the high level folks and have them get in a room and chit chat. There should be no one in the dark when something bad happens, or if it's perfectly great, right? Everybody should know what's going on. Everybody should have a hand in the planning and have a say in, and you know, it makes a huge difference. And even when everything goes great, you can just see when you've done a good planning process and you get that good brief to levels from boots on the ground up to the mayor of the city or the governor, when you brief well, it is impressive because it's effective, but you can tell they're like, oh, I'm buying into this process because these folks are squared away. And so that says a lot. So when you get into your sports and special event,

you know, specific stuff, use the process and follow it well. Don't skip things. Don't just change the dates from last year or this year. And again, everyone should be invited. That's pertinent. And I mean that if they're going to have people on the ground, they should be invited to the process. Some kind of saying that I thought of this evening and someone may have thought of, I don't think I've heard of it before, but it's similar to the, and then what, or always be thinking, you know, and then what is if you're comfortable with your event, don't be right? So if you've done this for years and years, yes, you're probably familiar with where it is and what's going on, but don't just do that every year. Redo the process, dust it off, freshen it up. You may see there's money saving, resource saving. You might see that

you're short resources and money. This may be your wheelhouse, but you know what? Maybe there's different factors to the terrain or whatever's happening. So don't be comfortable. Always, always be thinking that. And then what? Or just knowing, okay, what have we missed? What can we do better? Still enjoy it, right? You know, the event. Key elements, I think, to that event action plan for sure is, uh, let's focus on the communication element cause we won't go through the whole planning P, but everyone should be briefed on the Sunday day plan, right? So we've worked that good process together. Everyone's been invited and involved. We've prompted and built bridges and closed loops and relationships

and all that kind of stuff. And we're going to do this great ops brief. We might do a private brief for VIPs, whatever. And here's what we're going to do when it's sunny and everything's going well and awesome. Also, here's what we're going to do, particularly for the folks working the event on the contingency plans or, you know, what if something bad happens or what if weather comes in or what if whatever comes in or what

if whatever, whatever factor we need, both we need, everything's great. And here's what we do for these scenarios. You don't have to break down every scenario unless you're having kind of a sit down meeting where you can do that. If you're doing a standup, um, you know, you could just speak to the contingency plans. We'll switch to this channel. We'll go from there. If you're doing a standup one, but folks need to know what that is and have that available. Does everyone have working communication for the area of operations or the AO that you're in? Do we check before we send folks out on the hike or out in the balloons to know, hey, they all have the same radios and we can all hear each other whether they go 50 miles away or one mile away. Do we have all their cell phone numbers so we can do that accountability

or do they have our cell phone numbers so they can reach us back at command or the base or whatever you want to call it, the building that's in charge, you know, that's housing the folks that are coordinating this and is there redundancy? So if I have radios and we lose it and they're like, oh, no, I brought my own radios. It's always good to issue radios you know that work, you know that are in the coverage area that you're working and to for sure have a roster of contacts for everyone that is going out on a walking team,

that is going out on a balloon crew, that you are sending out there, that you can reach them 100% radio cell phones crews etc so the fourth bullet is to identify the essential essential elements of the steps involved in transitioning from event operations to an incident right so at this point we've gone from beautiful day nice nice view from up here to, oh, man, something really bad is happening. Now what? And the hard thing is, unless you have eyes on what's happening, you can't really tell.

You can tell when a NASCAR car flips over and it's on the fence. You can tell when lightning strikes somewhere in a football game or whatever, something like that. But if you're not tracking or looking where everybody is and some of these things, and particularly balloons, again, some of these festivals are enormous, like out West, you know, they're, they're spread out for miles and they're going. And even where I was, you know, we were spread out over a bit, so it's hard to see, but you know, we need to know kind of where all those folks are. So how we can identify those. Remember that checklist we talked about in episode 40, did you make one? If you didn't make one, can you on the fly, think about the primary things that you need to do to respond and to start working the problem, right? And so this is where, again,

that incident response piece really, really comes in that, hey, do we have accountability for our people? Do we know where the participants are? Do we know how to get them? Is anyone injured? How do we get medical to them? How do we move them to medical? You've got to start working those kind of things and checking on everybody. And does the team know their response is pertinent to their position?

So that goes back to that episode 40 we were talking about where if you're in operations, do you know what you're doing? If you're in planning, do you know what you're doing? If you're in planning, do you know what you're doing? If you're in public relations, if you're a representative from the local government, does everybody know what to do or what's suggested and able to meet up and work through the issue? Some of the things, if you're an agency assigned vehicles, there's fantastic solutions to be able to track those. And most 911 centers, public safety access points or PSAPs or localities track their vehicles already via GPS that's in those vehicles, right? So you can already have a good idea of assets that you've sent public safety wise or other government wise or whatever vehicles you can track. Or if not, who's closest? Where can they

go? Can they get eyes on it and start working the problem that way with assets that you already have with your GPS trackers? For folks out doing a search for, you know, in this case, again, folks in balloon crews, do they have GPS trackers? Can you look at a map, a nice map, let's say like an ArcGIS map or whatever product you're using, and just look at all the balloons flying through the air and see where they are. That's pretty awesome. GPS trackers are pretty cheap. The connection to those to put them in a system is relatively easy. You have numbers that are in the device. You pull it in the GIS system. You pull it up on a big screen and you can track that stuff like a boss.

It's pretty awesome and I highly recommend it. And with that, do we have a resource unit set up to do regular accountability checks? So are we checking with the crews every, you know, depending on flight time or out in the field time, you know, so let's say flight time, are we checking every 10 minutes? You know, are we checking 15 minutes? Is that intrusive? You know, whatever the, a good interval is, but if it's, if it's not a super long flight, um, you know, what are the intervals we're going to put in and make sure that we know everybody's good to go and we're, we can see where they are. And even if it's, if it's via radio and they're reporting latitude, longitude, and we just mark it on a map somehow, how are we doing that? So we know, Oh, last known reported locations, this or real time,

which is optimal is we can just look at the GIS system, which is pretty awesome. Can we talk to everybody? So that goes back again to the communications. And if we can't, how are we going to make sure that we can either by sending folks out to the area they are, where the incident within the event happened, or if they made emergency landing, and so they're not effective and figure that out. So these are communication pathways that we really need to figure out. How are we going to account for the returning participants and attendees? So what services do folks need after horrible things? Um, they need people to acknowledge they were in something and just give them a place to sit and know that people know that they're safe.

But before that, they need to be contacted. And this really goes back to, again, you know, can we talk to everyone? And, and for me, we couldn't, there wasn't good cell coverage. We didn't have radios. We weren't being tracked. Um, and so after we did that hard landing, we're out there for a good bit, 40 minutes, an hour, and as it would happen, uh, got a little rained on. And so relied on, you know, the old cell phone from our our pilot and not optimal right so and we got back um it was just me and my wife and we were dropped off and uh pilot apologized it wasn't his fault uh for what had happened and then we were by ourself, right? So we walked in, super freaked out, lost it with each other for a few minutes, went to the bathroom, walked like zombies to our car

and drove home, got checked on by our family. And I will tell you from personal experience, if you're an emergency manager, if you're an incident manager out there and your family assistance plan is lacking, it will be a pretty big disservice to the people who will need it when you don't plan for it. And it leaves a lasting impression. And so the kind of fervor and the passion that I have for that accountability piece for tracking people, for taking care of them is, is that's why it feels horrible. And it's something that's pretty easily preventable. Uh, and you know, that doesn't make whatever complex incident anybody's involved in easy, but that's why we put so much work in upfront because it makes a huge difference. So family assistance plans, what I've seen are pretty, pretty hot potato issue because not a lot of folks want to own it. It's complex. You know what,

if you can get a building and get people that can, you know, counsel and let people talk to them and just give them a place to get a cup of water and a coffee or something, that's a great start, right? That's a great basic start. All the, you know, there's huge family assistance center plans from the airlines. I was fortunate to get some training from them that, you know, they take over whole hotels, but that's a whole different scale and airline crash. And, you know, all the site visits and just tons of stuff, you know, remains handling and those kinds of things, you know, and then, so if we things. You know, and then so if we provide those immediate services,

how are we going to follow up with them, right? So is our local or state or, you know, whatever level your mental health services, your crisis counseling, your peer support is involved in, are they tied in or are we going to make sure that they follow up with folks and see how they're doing? I am eternally grateful to my friends who did that for my wife and I, who set us up with the locality we were at. Interestingly enough, I don't remember if I've shared this before, but the counselor we talked to half the time told us about things he went through. So it was very interesting, to say the least, but you

know what, sometimes you just need to talk to somebody and, uh, I guess if you get 50% of the airtime, that's good. Um, but it was our friends that hooked us up. Uh, it was our friends that checked on us. It was our friends that called to make sure we were okay. Uh, and that was fantastic. And then it was, it was us. And so I'll say, if you can provide that without folks having to put the extra effort or wonder, man, what's, what's going on here, um, it will be invaluable and, and it will make a huge difference. Fifth bullet for topics in the TEEX management 404 class, which is sports and special event management is identify the importance of recovery issues after an incident and partnerships in

events slash incident close out hot washes after action review reporting corrective action planning and implementation so there's hot washes there's immediate you know this just happened let's talk about it what's what's going on how are you all doing because again not just the participants but the responders are affected anyone involved is affected the local folks that may have seen something you know what feedback are we getting from those folks? The after action review slash improvement plan, that HC per Homeland Security exercise and evaluation optimal thing is that we're going to have for the after action review portion, an open and honest discussion with ourselves and our peers and everyone that was involved in that

stakeholder group we talked about at the first bullet. And we are going to put that into an improvement plan and actually do something about it. And that's a huge deal. We've talked about before, and you all know, and other folks have said this, that it's hard to get objective feedback and there's ways to do it, right? You don't have to be a super straightforward, emotionless, I'm going to dog pile on you person when you give it. But sometimes you just need to give honest feedback and there's, there's, you know, good ways you can deliver that. And also you need to be able to receive that, right? You need to be able to receive that there's things we could have done that. And also you need to be able to receive that, right? You need to be able to receive that there's things we could have done better.

And when you've been part of a horrible event or incident, that's really hard to take in or you've helped plan one where something bad goes happen. That's super tough. And I've been on that end of it too. And it's not great. And then an improvement plan. So, okay, we were open. We talked about all this.

We did our review. We covered as many bases as we could think of. Now, okay, we were open. We talked about all this. We did our review. We covered as many bases as we could think of. Now, how are we going to make this better? You know, how are we going to go down the line with our corrective action planning? Who's going to track the progress of our training and exercises to shore up gaps? Who's going to have us meet regularly because we didn't before this to make sure that everybody's on board, all the stakeholders going for every event going forward. That's the mindset that should happen, right? This should be change management, corrective action planning. It should be trying to make better what wasn't good for what just happened or how we responded or how we plan

for this event. And even if nothing goes wrong with the event, you should still do a super solid after action improvement plan, right? It's not all smiles and hugs and perfect every time, even when no bad thing happens in the middle of it. There's things you can do better every single time you do an event, whether it's, you know, a three times a year or once a year or five times a year thing,

there's always room for improvement. And so, you know, we as instant management and for anyone that's in project management listening, we need to just accept that and own it and be comfortable with it. It's no big deal. The last bullet is to apply incident management planning and resource management techniques as they relate to an incident that occurs within a special event or in a sports venue within a multi-agency, multi-discipline response scenario. So when you read this on its own, if you're not an incident command where you've used that or incident management, it sounds like, wow, how do you do that? Which again, circle back to just good planning, the foundation of four things, or just following the process, right? So the

difference is you're not going to whip out your wall laminated planning P and go, okay, let's do this process. If something happens right away, you're going to be accountability, right? We're going to get that. And it's for everyone. It's not just my logo, my patch, my badge, et cetera. We've talked about that. Or if it's a, you know, a big sporting event, uh, it's not my team or it's everyone, we're going to find out that everyone's here. Um, you know, I can't imagine the NFL and major league baseball or other big major league sports. Um, you know, how do you account for the ticket holders? You know, cause depending on how they bought those tickets, do we even know how they are? Whereas when you're at a race, a road race on foot or on a bike or something like that, or perhaps even the balloon thing, you can know who's who, right?

So who's wearing bib number, who's in balloon number, who's riding bike number. So you can associate that and kind of track a little better. So you can see who's on the course and for events where they have chips. I've seen huge running races where they use chips and we can actually see where the folks are. It's pretty amazing. Our bike races too. So that's kind of the pinnacle that we should aspire to is we're real-time tracking our event support staff to know where they are to be able to deploy them and make sure they are safe. And then we're also for the participants. Now the public is a whole nother bit, right.

Or the attendees that aren't being tracked. So resource coordination, another thing where we're transitioning to multi-event. So initial response, who's going to go, how are we going to communicate that? What medical treatment do we need? And then that family assistance centerpiece, right. So, you know, especially the multi-agency, multi-discipline, multi-jurisdictional even, right, is another

factor that's not in that bullet, but certainly they talk about it in the course, is you'll get levels of government, levels of authority, depending on where it is, vying for who wants to do what or who doesn't. And so, last thing, communication, right? And every after action report communication, early planning for projects, communication, incidents, events, communication is huge. And the big buckets, and there's way more than this, there's whole courses and all that, is how are we going to communicate internally as a team when something happens and across our multi-agency, multi-discipline team, right? Because honestly, this last bullet should be no big deal because we're already a multi-agency, multi-discipline team, right? Because honestly,

this last bullet should be no big deal because we're already a multi-agency, multi-discipline team if we've planned well together. So how are we going to communicate with each other that gets to that switching channels thing, right? To the contingency channel or everybody stay on this one and move to that one. And then how are we going to go to the public? So we talked about in our contingency plans, how are we going to tell everybody where to go? How are we going to tell them where to meet their loved ones? How are we going to tell them where we're going to bring in all the folks on the balloons or all the folks that are on the bikes and there's lightning or how are we going to do that kind of stuff? And so our messaging is huge well before the event, but in this case,

and particularly if something happens, how do we get that immediate response? Do we have public information folks on site? Do we have them on standby? Were they part of the planning team? Are they there to respond immediately? That's a huge factor. So that's all the bullets in this course. A little over coming up on half an hour.

Hope this was helpful. Some redundancy with contingency planning, episode 40, like I talked about, and some of the other stuff. But again, I'm passionate about it because from both planning events and then being part of an incident within the event, I've seen both sides. I've been part of when it worked well, planning for it and plan for things where bad stuff happened. And fortunately, we've done some gaming, but you can't stop everything. And I've been part of where there were some key elements from my perspective that didn't happen and it had a pretty big impact

on how the rest of that day went. And so again, when you're comfortable with an event that you plan a lot, that you're part of, that you've been involved in, or it's a new one, when you're comfortable and you're like, yeah, we got this. Don't be comfortable thinking then what, and keep thinking that and enjoy it, but just stay sharp. Keep that, keep that edge. Um, that's why you're in a position to plan for a special event. That's why you're an incident response. That's why you're, you're, you know, coordinating projects,

million dollar projects. Cause you're always going to be thinking, okay, going well, now what? Let's do that. So again, TX Management 404, check it out. It's a good course. It's a good augment if you're already on an incident management team and have some education and training. Thank you all for listening. I appreciate feedback, comments, folks that have reached out, downloads, et cetera. Really more importantly, I just hope this helps. I really do. I hope it helps somebody have a better day than I've had sometimes. I hope it helps the person that you recommend it to. And I appreciate everybody that's recommended this show to others. And everybody out there, stay safe, get after it, do your best, and Godspeed.