Print this pageHow standards help staff at Legoland Windsor to ensure a fun and safe day out for children and their parents
Legoland Windsor welcomes more than 1.6 million visitors each year. A mix of attractions and rides ensures an entertaining and exciting day out for parents and children, while standards make sure that everyone onsite is safe. Health and safety manager Alan Carruthers explains how the park uses standards and best practice guidelines to:
ensure the safety of guests and staff at all times
manage common problems from lost children to scraped knees
Ensuring guest safety
Legoland Windsor has a comprehensive and detailed safety programme that covers staff training and equipment maintenance and operation.
Alan says:
"Amusement park rides are covered by HSG 175 - a standard that concerns the buying and specification of equipment for rides. There are only really 20 different rides in the world - the difference is in the presentation. The standard helps us buy standard parts, rather than specially made ones, which significantly reduces the chances of manufacturing errors."
To make sure they're in excellent working order, each of Legoland's 26 rides are completely disassembled, checked and reassembled every year by an external engineering company, in line with Health and Safety Executive guidelines. And when the rides and attractions are rebuilt and the park reopens for the season, safety management continues every day.
Alan says:
"The rides are checked each day before they're started up. We've got clear checklists specific to each one and staff are trained to use these. While checks are being carried out, rides are locked off so no one can gain access or start a ride while it's being checked. Many of the rides weigh 30 tons when they're being operated, so it's essential to do this."
Making the visitors' experience fun
Every member of staff at Legoland gets detailed training on safety and guest management. In fact, Legoland's procedures are used by other parks as a best-practice standard.
New employees receive a training package called 'Fundation', which covers key safety and guest welfare issues. Staff returning from previous years are given the 'Play On' package, which reinforces the basics and focuses on any new developments onsite.
Alan says:
"When we're open, we've got 1,100 members of staff looking after 18,000 guests every day. To make sure everyone clearly understands their duties, we've got manuals specific to each job."
Managing common problems
The occasional lost child or scraped knee is to be expected, but the park's staff are well versed in what to do.
Alan says:
"On a busy day, we get one or two kids separated from their parents. We usually manage to reunite them within half an hour. We use special guidelines to ensure the child's safety. Staff communicate via radio rather than the tannoy system. 'Floating' staff search for the child once they get notification from the parent."
First aid training is comprehensively covered. Each year, 20 employees attend four-day courses and 80 attend one-day courses.
Alan says:
"Last year we had 12 incidents that we had to report. Six of those involved staff and some of the others were when we called an ambulance for a guest as a precaution. We review everything to see what we can learn, even in situations where we couldn't have done anything to prevent an accident happening."
