Health and Safety

Risk Assessment¶

Your SU and venue will require a risk assessment in their standard format.

Things you should mention:

• Fire Risk and understanding your buildings policy.
• Electrical Safety. Needs to be considered if hardware hacks are common. PAT testing for your equipment, etc.
• Food Poisoning. You need to remove food after a certain time period.
• No Alcohol being consumed at the event.
• Sleep deprivation and how you encourage people to sleep.
• Harassment and how you enforce your code of conduct.
• Crime related issues and how you have team members in every room with attendees valuables and how you have the security contacts in case of other issues.
• Power / Lighting failure.
• Heating equipment and burns. Normally you aren't heating things on site so this reduces issues.
• Soldering or tool usage for hardware hacks.

If you are running in the colder months you need to consider risks of ice and the building heating.

You might be requested to have a sign in/out sheet so you are aware of who is in the building in case of an emergency.

If you have security or porters at your event they will likely be first aid and heavy lifting trained.

Code Of Conduct¶

All events should have a code of conduct.

If you are an MLH event, you'll be using theirs.

If you need one the Hack Code of Conduct is commonly used.

Under 18s¶

If you are working with Under 18s, make sure you check out Cathryn Dunicliff's thread on how they managed it at HackTheMidlands.