Cricket Australia

Carrying paper checklists around in your carry on?

Ash Hepburn, a risk analyst with Cricket Australia, is responsible for the risk management at each cricket match under CA’s control. He needs to be across all manner of risks – everything from player safety to temporary structures and fan zones. He used to conduct multiple safety inspections each day using paper.

Ash and Cricket Australia’s event delivery team had to carry around stacks of checklists in their suitcases as they travelled all across Australia hosting matches. They had to remember to print all these paper checklists either at hotels or hunt down a printer at the stadium.

Even once the team printed paper, it could’ve been the wrong checklist version. Sometimes people don’t see new versions in time to print them, or were accidentally left out of an email chain. Ash says this created a bit of a mental barrier to using checks at all.

A digital auditing solution

Ash began working alongside an event safety consultancy who were engaged by Cricket Australia, they introduced him to SafetyCulture platform. The event safety consultancy developed safety protocols and checklists to assist with the management of fireworks and shared their own safety practices with digital checklists.

Mobile checklists mean no one needs to print audits on paper. Managing audit templates in the cloud and pushing any updates directly to mobile devices means that no one uses outdated audits. It also means that each saved audit is searchable and organised on the SafetyCulture platform desktop platform. Each time a team completes an audit, they can send an email report to Ash.

Carissa Harris (Events Director – International Cricket), keeps each match running smoothly. Everything from sponsorship signage to medical plans fall under her domain. She used to laminate checklists that she distributed to each team or individual on a particular day. Carissa even has her own checklist which is a sort of master checklist of the checks of all the other teams. Once she saw how Ash had implemented SafetyCulture for risk management, she began exploring how to apply it to her own event management checks.

Standardising every single match

SafetyCulture platform has become so ingrained in Cricket Australia’s operations. Ash conducts safety audits in accordance with International Cricket standards, but he also works with others in each stadium location. Ash uses SafetyCulture platform to communicate the relevant safety standards for each team. Ash says, “We need a formal checklist so we know everything is getting done, but it has to be easy to use because we don’t have time to train people every single match.”

Ash says that digital auditing has not only made safety checks easier, but it’s brought safety and quality standards to the forefront of each employee’s mind. “We’ve had massively positive feedback from the organisation. Risk management and safety is still a newer concept for sports. Mining, construction, food production, they’re used to the idea of workplace health and safety. But because the sporting world is still new to it, we worked hard to create formal checks and get everyone on board. Having SafetyCulture platform has made it easier to sell the message.” Carissa and Ash both appreciate that they can pull up historical data on audits with a quick search, and they can easily demonstrate their compliance with International Cricket standards.

Each cricket match is pulled off thanks to a complex system off the pitch; one that involves Cricket Australia as the governing body, but also representatives from each stadium, and the teams that they represent.