Step Up Your Winter Event Safety: A Guide to Pedestrian Planning

1. Assess your site requirements
Before any winter event, conducting a thorough site assessment is vital for identifying potential hazards and risks that could affect pedestrian safety. This assessment should include a checklist of potential obstacles, such as uneven walkways, areas prone to ice build-up, inadequate lighting and car parks that may become wet and boggy. Using a supplier like Sunbelt Rentals, allows us to recommend the optimal equipment and layout to minimise potential risks and maximise pedestrian safety.

2. Coordinate with Local Authorities
Collaborating with local authorities is key to obtaining the necessary permits and permissions for your event. This may include important aspects such as road closures, parking arrangements, and security measures. It is also essential to provide local authorities with comprehensive event details, including expected attendance numbers, event schedules, enabling them to allocate resources efficiently.

3. Designate clear walkways
Clearly marked designated walkways guide attendees and prevent pedestrians from straying into hazardous areas. This can be via combination of well-placed barriers and signage to indicate where pedestrians should walk. At Sunbelt Rentals, we can also provide highly trained traffic management operatives to assist the public should they encounter any issues during your event, as well as providing temporary crossing systems to facilitate safe passage for pedestrians.

4. Consider flooring options
Trakway provides a practical and adaptable solution for winter events. In particular, lightweight flooring options are designed to be effortlessly manoeuvrable throughout your event site, ensuring you can adapt to changing requirements with ease. These versatile solutions are particularly valuable in adverse winter weather conditions, offering stability and mobility when you need it most.

Euromats are ideal for pedestrians and accommodating lightweight vehicles. They serve as an effective wet weather solution, preventing mud and moisture from causing inconvenience and ensuring a clean and accessible environment for event attendees.

Additionally, Supatrac flooring helps keep pedestrians' shoes clean and minimises the risk of slips, trips, and falls.

Whether your event permit requires you to have vehicle access for your roads, temporary car parks to reduce vehicles getting stuck in mud and congestion, or you just want to create a safe surface for pedestrians to walk, Sunbelt Rentals can visit your site to provide you with the best options available

5. Implement crowd control measures
No matter the size of your event, implementing crowd control measures and vehicle zones with equipment such as barriers and fencing can guide attendees, prevent overcrowding and improve pedestrian safety. It’s vital to have the knowledge to highlight where barriers could avoid a potential issue. At Sunbelt Rentals, we can help to proactively communicate any pinch points that may cause congestion from restricted flow of pedestrians.

6. Use Effective Lighting
Effective lighting is paramount for night-time events, ensuring attendees have adequate visibility. Placing emphasis on illuminating walkways and entrances with strategically positioned lights or illuminated signage is key to facilitating safe navigation of attendees. Poor lighting significantly hampers visibility, creating an environment ripe for accidents. Unevenly lit spaces can conceal hazards, leading to slips, trips, and falls, which account for a substantial portion of accidents at an event.

Sunbelt Rentals offers an extensive range of environmentally friendly tower lights, including hybrid and fully solar-powered units. Our range of Self Charging, Battery and Solar Hybrid tower light units are particularly effective as they can operate silently throughout the night and can significantly reduce your reliance on and costs associated with fuel.

7. Provide Adequate Signage
Clear and effective signage is indispensable for guiding attendees and alerting them to potential hazards. These signs should use simple language, incorporate symbols and graphics for enhanced understanding, and be positioned where they are highly visible – such as walkways and entrances.

Variable Message Signs (VMS) are designed to offer heightened visibility, user-friendly interfaces, and adaptability to diverse weather and terrain conditions. These versatile signs serve multiple purposes, including the communication of time-critical messages, with the added flexibility of pre-programmed message changes.

Whatever your event size, Sunbelt Rentals efficiently manages sign installation, maintenance, and removal, and ensures speedy delivery.

8. Enhance Site Safety
With the challenging weather conditions that often accompany winter, safeguarding attendees becomes even more crucial. These include two-way radios for instant communication, body-worn cameras as deterrents and incident recorders, nationwide press-to-talk functionality, and emergency buttons. Our state-of-the-art CCTV systems enable real-time monitoring to proactively identify and mitigate safety risks.

9. Speak to Sunbelt Rentals today
At Sunbelt Rentals, we understand the challenges of planning and organising events – no matter the scale. Coordinating with stakeholders, following procedures, and prioritising the safety of workers and the public are our top priorities. We offer a comprehensive one stop shop solution, guaranteeing efficient and effective deployment of equipment and solutions.

With our 360 Solutions, you can benefit from a single point of contact throughout our partnership. Our decades of experience ensures we bring detailed plans and expertise to tackle even the most complex projects. Contact us today.