August 22, 2018

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Event Safety & Security

‘It is so important to ensure that you have enough toilet facilities for your customers’: In conversation with Ruth Napp, Simply Loos

With the summer events season in full swing, SHP caught up Ruth Napp, Managing Director at Simply Hire Group, to find out about the planning involved with setting up temporary shower and toilet facilities, and the processes involved during and after an event.

SimplyLoos

July and August must be a hugely busy time for Simply Loos, please tell us a little about what events you have covered this summer and what you have on the horizon.

Ruth NappRuth Napp (RN): “This summer has been our biggest season of events to date. We have supplied portable toilets and VIP units for a number of festivals and events including London Youth Games, Kisstory on the Common and Lambeth Country Show.

“We are now planning for September and the upcoming months where we will be ending festival season at ABODE in the park on 23 September. After this, we will continue to supply our services for a range of prestigious clients including Royal Windsor Racecourse.”

At the end of July, you supplied facilities for the Lambeth Country Show, that must have been a pretty large project?

Ruth Napp (RN): “Absolutely. Lambeth Country Show was our biggest event to date. Over the weekend, 160,000 people attended. With such huge attendance numbers, it is integral to ensure that you have enough toilet facilities to cater to the crowds. We supplied 600 portable toilets, VIP showers, VIP toilet trailers and a team of attendants to Lambeth Country Show.

“Of course, on such a large scale, we were required to safely dispose of 20,300 gallons of waste per day. This was all whilst maintaining the facilities to the highest standard of cleanliness as well as prepare for the next day during the night.”

What are the most common challenges you are faced with, working on such varied sites?

SimplyLoosRuth Napp (RN): “The most common problem that we face is often the location of the site and gaining access. For example, due to the sheer volume of suppliers and security checks, Lambeth Country Show took us up to two hours to get on site on some occasions. When you partner this with having to make trips to our disposal facility for waste management, this resulted in a lot of hours spent in traffic.

“We have a duty of care for our staff and drivers. Of course, they need to sleep during the festivals, which we do once we have cleaned the facilities and ensured that they are ready for the next day.”

The service you offer, is it primarily about allowing your clients to provide a more pleasant service to their customers, or is there a wider health and hygiene approach?

Ruth Napp (RN): “It’s about both of these things. Of course, the health and hygiene of our clients is at the forefront of everything that we do. The official regulation states that you only actually require one toilet per 100 people. Of course, you can imagine the queues that would form if this was the case.

“For us, it is often an education process on helping our clients understand why it is so important to ensure that you have enough facilities for your customers. We want to give people the experience that we would expect ourselves and strive to always achieve nothing less than excellence.”

How much planning goes into a big event, in terms of where the facilities are located and how they are going to be kept safe and hygienic during the event?

Ruth Napp (RN): “All of our events are meticulously planned months in advance by our expert team to ensure that everything runs smoothly and that we are exceeding expectations. Annual events are reviewed on a yearly basis to assess their success and possible areas for improvement.

“To ensure that we are keeping everything safe and hygienic at all times, we have a dedicated on-site team who manage the facilities as well a fleet of vehicles available to manage waste.”

How do you deal with the huge amounts of waste, ensuring that environment isn’t affected during and after events?

SimplyLoosRuth Napp (RN): “It is so important that all waste is disposed of correctly into a sewage treatment works. As a fully licensed waste carrier with disposal sites across the London region, we dispose of waste according to hazardous waste regulations.

“In addition to this, we work hard to ensure that we have minimal impact on the environment as possible and minimise the number of trips our vehicles do by doing this as efficiently as possible.”

What procedures do you have in place to ensure the safe construction and de-construction of the facilities?

Ruth Napp (RN): “We have method statements and risk assessments for everything that we do. Every member of our staff has training for assembling and disassembling our facilities to ensure that it is always being done as safely as possible. This includes additional e-learning courses as well as a health and safety system for lifting, unloading, fork life, etc.

“Teamwork is at the heart of what we do and our staff are trained together to ensure that they are working safely as a team at all times.”

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