The busy season starts now, not in December
September is when the phones start ringing for event security operators. Spring racing, festivals, school formals, corporate Christmas functions, New Year celebrations: the bookings stack up quickly, and so do the contracts. Every one of those contracts assumes you have the right insurance in place before your guards walk through the gate.
The problem is that most operators check their cover once a year at renewal, and their renewal date rarely lines up with the season. If your policy was set up when you were running two guards on retail sites, it may not reflect a business that is about to staff a 10,000 person festival. September is the right month to sit down and make sure your cover matches the work you are actually about to do.
What can go wrong at an event
Event work concentrates risk in a way that day-to-day static guarding does not. Large crowds, alcohol, amplified emotions, temporary infrastructure and time pressure all sit in one place. The claims that come out of event security work tend to fall into familiar categories:
- A patron is injured during a removal from a licensed area and alleges excessive force. That is a public liability claim, and use-of-force allegations are among the most common brought against crowd controllers.
- A crowd crush or fall at an entry point leads to injuries, and the security contractor is named alongside the event organiser for alleged failures in crowd management.
- A guard directing vehicles in an overflow car park is blamed for a collision or a pedestrian strike.
- Equipment, staging or a vendor’s stock is damaged or stolen from an area your team was contracted to protect, and the client alleges a failure to prevent loss.
- One of your own guards is injured in an altercation or a fall, which brings workers compensation and personal accident considerations into play.
None of this means event work should be avoided. It means the cover behind it needs to be deliberate, not left over from last year.
Questions to ask before you accept event contracts
Work through these before the season ramps up:
Does your policy actually cover crowd control and event work? Security insurance is written around declared activities. If your policy was arranged for static guarding or mobile patrols and you take on crowd control at licensed venues or festivals, an undeclared activity can put a claim at risk. Tell your broker what work you are quoting on before you win it.
Is your limit of liability high enough for the contracts you want? Event organisers, councils and venues commonly specify a minimum public liability limit in their contracts, and many will ask for a certificate of currency before you start. Check the limits in the contracts you are chasing against the limit on your policy – the typical limit is $20 million.
Do your staffing plans match your declarations? If you will take on casuals or subcontractors for the season, confirm how your policy treats subcontracted labour, and whether subcontractors need to hold their own cover. Your workers compensation obligations also change as headcount grows, and the rules differ by state.
Can you produce a certificate of currency quickly? Event clients move fast. Having current certificates ready to send is a small thing that wins work.
Do the review in September, not the week of the event
The worst time to discover a gap in your cover is after an incident, and the second worst time is the week before a major event, when there is no time to fix it properly. A short conversation with a specialist broker in September gives you time to adjust limits, declare new activities and sort out subcontractor arrangements before the first big booking lands.
Talk to Guardsafe before the season starts
Guardsafe arranges insurance for Australian security businesses every day, including event security and crowd control operators, so we know what event contracts demand and what claims in this industry actually look like. Call 1300 880 320 or contact us here to get your cover reviewed before the busy season begins.
