Symphotech Set Sail with Tall Ships Liverpool

The Three Festivals Tall Ships Regatta 2018 featured an international fleet of Tall Ships that arrived into Liverpool as part of a four day international celebration. Symphotech supported its client, Culture Liverpool, with event management and safety through the planning stage and across the weekend.

The event, which also travels to Dublin and Bordeaux, took place in Liverpool over the late May bank holiday weekend in partnership with Sail Training International and Bordeaux Wine Festival. The site itself was made up of three zones with a number of considerations in terms of safety. Symphotech were instructed to work on creating safe crowd flow routes, traffic management and safety across the complex site alongside the River Mersey.

Symphotech worked with a number of stakeholders and joint agencies, including its client (Culture Liverpool, part of Liverpool City Council) but also the emergency services, Albert Dock, Bordeaux Wines and cruise liners. Symphotech supported the stakeholders in a strategic capacity at the design stage and logistically during the event. This included localised responses to adverse weather and medical incidents and ensuring information is coordinated and communicated effectively across the extensive event site.

Eddy Grant is Symphotech’s Director of Safety. He commented: "We provided logistical, pragmatic and practical solutions that helped the event run seamlessly for our clients and attendees.

“We are continuing to work with our new logging system which gives us an accurate timeline of the whole event which was benefitted our operations. We have colleagues across the extensive site in safety management and when they use the system I can see what they are dealing with in real time. This builds our ability to respond, communicate and prioritise"

Susan Lees, Senior Events Manager at Liverpool City Council said: “Symphotech has been instrumental providing valuable advice in relation to the crowd management plan and helped us deliver a safe, successful event”

A potential parade

In the weeks running up to the Three Festivals Tall Ships Regatta, Liverpool FC qualified for the Champions League Final against Real Madrid. In anticipation, Culture Liverpool had to respond quickly to ensure provisions and planning for a homecoming parade through the centre of Liverpool, on the already busy Saturday of Tall Ships. Symphotech supported them by looking at contingencies and advised on the crowd management for a safe homecoming parade.

Eddy said: “There was some very robust planning that went into an event that potentially would not, and in the end did not, happen. Without losing a beat at 10:30pm after the match a re-brief went out and we were back to plan one. We tried to make it a seamless transition”

Susan Lees, from Culture Liverpool, said: “For three weeks, all of my other projects stopped and it was all hands on deck to pull together a potential homecoming parade for Liverpool. Despite being disappointed when they didn’t win, we were able to revert back to our original event plans easily. Symphotech supported us to make that process painless.”