Tips for Site Coordination

Contents
1.0 Site Co-ordinators
1.1 Procurement
1.2 Pre-camp premises and team
1.3 Taking the site
1.4 Site office
1.5 Meetings
2 Access
3 Communications and gates
4 Transport
5 Eco-wash
6 Recycling and Waste
7 Council Liaison
8 Clearing Up AKA Tat down
9 Debrief

This document is based on the experiences of the site team of Climate Camps in 2006 and 2007. Sometimes it is written as instructions for the future, or the “ideal” and sometimes as descriptions of the past. Your circumstances won't be the same as ours, but this debrief-document might bring important issues into consciousness, and help you plan and prepare effectively. Remember: Planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance.

1.0. Site coordinators
It would be wise to have a team of coordinators starting to think about logistics long before the site and date of events are known. There are plenty of things to get your head around, and the more lead-in time you have, the better. It's worth looking through folders from previous camps, and contacting the teams who have run them for valuable lessons. At the point of moving into the preparation space (see 1.2.) the team would ideally be three to five people, between them taking on procurement, storage, making of structures, council liaison, volunteer recruitment and coordination.

1.1 Procurement:
As soon as the site is known, find the following:

• Agreement with the Climate Camp Gathering on a site preparation budget, covering hire of premises (see below), and procurement of materials including transport
• If possible, a debit card from the finance team, to pay for agreed expenses – maybe on a dedicated site account?
• People who are willing to be trained for the various specialist site teams
• People who are willing to train the various specialist site teams
  A venue for training, at least two months before the event
• Someone with a vehicle and a garage to be buying/ tatting/ sourcing/ storing stuff from as soon as the site is known. (This might in future be the tat collective)
• A recycling timber yard for your diverse building needs
• A recycling project for paint, fabric and whatever else is available
  Sources of sawdust, woodchip, straw bales etc. for toilets (straw bales are easier to find and cheaper early in the year – we had trouble finding any at all in July!)
• A site or sites where you can take the compost and straw bales left over from your kitchens, toilets, urinals and grey water systems

All this will save a lot of money and hassle in the run up to the camp.

1.2 Pre Camp Premises & team:
If you can, find premises combining office, construction area and storage space under one roof. If that's not possible, find an office within short distance of the other two. It may be worth having all this at least two weeks before the event, so structures such as toilets, grey water systems etc. can be built in advance. It's also a good collection point for volunteers, who can join in the various preparation tasks, and be integrated into the diverse specialist site teams. Surveillance might be an issue.
In this period, it's good to have a team of four people based at the office and premises, who will have their hands full with tasks like ordering equipment and material, liaising with site specialists, other working groups and official bods, coordinating pick-up journeys, sorting through stores and coordinating volunteers. Daily coordination meetings each morning help keep everybody up to speed.
Timber ordered and cut to size for camp structure needs to be bundled and clearly marked for its purpose, to avoid getting mixed up later on site, and also to avoid people using it for random building jobs. Timber for neighbourhoods needs to be ordered by them beforehand, to avoid massive wastage of wood, as happened at previous camps. This needs to be pointed out at a pre-camp gathering.

1.3 Taking the Site
The fire lane and boundary teams need to be on it straight away. Initial marking out of fire lanes needs 3 teams of 2 people to avoid knackering individuals early on. Don't use cheap hazard tape for marking lanes – it will get ripped each night and have to be replaced. Use a thicker, ribbon tape instead, made flush with the ground by banging wooden pegs right in. Spaces for structures need to be marked out with flags at the corners and in the centre, or in any other obvious way.

Another person is needed to mark out bays for different types of materials and equipment. This will avoid unnecessary loss of equipment and supplies within the site as a lot of stuff will arrive at the same time and be brought in, in a frenzied fashion. Each bay needs a clear sign as to what it is supposed to contain. Have an occasional check to make sure that the system still works. If you put the bays in view of the site tent you can keep an eye on what goes in and out, and direct people if necessary.

Wood particularly needs to be rationed – it was the main wasted item at CC 06 and CC 07 (4 lorry loads wasted and £300 extra cost for pick up!)

1.4 Site Office
This will be a space packed with people and tools, some of them hazardous and/or expensive (the tools), so aim for something like a 30'x20' non-leaky marquee. The electricians need the most space! Alternatively, you could go for a "tool bar" (signing in/out of tools) set up in a secure trailer which could be parked behind the Site structure and connect with it by a serving hatch. A trailer like "veggies" but bigger could serve as year round secure tool storage only requiring hard standing, and improve security and organisation before, during and after the camp too.
It's very important to establish good links with other groups such as police/council liaison, and individuals such as plumbers, carpenters and electricians, including the many who will join you as volunteers as they arrive at the camp. The ever-extending nature of the team helps to keep on top of trouble shooting throughout the event without individual burn out.

What you can't have enough of:

• Willing volunteers – keep everybody's name, neighbourhood and phone number together with a note on what they're particularly good at or keen on doing
• Material, paint and brushes for banner making and sign writing. A designated space where this and sign-writing were going on would also be a good idea.
• Spare big tent pegs, esp. wooden, and marquee spikes.
• Big sledgehammers early in the event for marquee set-up.
• Tea and biscuits for volunteers and site team

1.5 Meetings:
At CC 07 it was good for us to top the Site-wide meetings agenda, not sure how the neighbourhoods felt about always being at the bottom! Our own internal meetings worked best in the evenings, so we could all spread out and catch the neighbourhood and general meetings come morning.

2.0 Access:
For wheelchair access, a path made from 8'x4' ply sheets (min 3/4” thickness) has been used successfully at past gatherings. The track should at least connect the site entrance with the main marquee, the wheelchair friendly neighbourhood and the disabled access toilet. FSC certified ply would be nice.

At previous events, induction loops were set up for people with hearing difficulties during meetings in the main marquee. These can be hired from some resource centres.

Access for children – a separate children's toilet block will be much appreciated, this can be a bucket job – see Sanitation recipe for details. Other space for children and parents/ carers needs to be allocated in the site layout, and structures provided.

Interpretation into foreign languages during meetings has usually not featured as an issue, and was probably arranged on a one-to-one basis.

3. Comm(unication)s & Gates:
The division of Communications and Gates have related but separate roles and should therefore have separate spaces. At climate camps, on-site communications use a mixture of short-wave radios and mobile phones.

The Comms tent is primarily concerned with the methodical charging of batteries and radios, training people in the use thereof, and being a back up for info spread. Gate manages the bulk of information-spreading, as well as the obvious securing of the entry points, observing and reporting what the cops are up to. Having Comms not facing the general public seemed to work in not having them dragged in to all gate activity, as at Drax. Each daytime Gate shift is taken on by a different neighbourhood and includes one person whose role it is to be in the Comms tent, learning the back room stuff while their mates are gate keeping. This way all neighbourhoods can learn how to maintain communications technologies as well as use them.

4. Transport:
Ideally the camp would have:
1 x 7.5t flatbed trucks with hydraulic lift
1 or 2 x 7.5t box lorry
2 or 3 3.5t box vans,
2 0r 3 transit vans and flatbeds each
a 4x4 or quad motorbike with trailer for on-site movement of stuff
2 or more minibuses
At least 2 drivers for each of the above
Transport needs a couple of people engaged in the preparation process from early on, with their heads in transport mode to work out vehicle needs and cheap and convenient ways of hiring vehicles – in particular finding a friendly company to put hire vans on its insurance for any driver, if possible.
Recruit as many drivers as possible early in the process to avoid burn out.

5 Eco-Wash:
It's far-awayness was brilliant - it would have a been a swamp if it had been more central, and if there is no greywater system and it's not hot, sunny and dry, then bowl washes not showers is the thing! If we have a solar shower on mains water again though, it will need some form of water restriction (rationing), and a grey water system that pipes away the potential swamp
“ My own ideal facility would have a cold water tap plus a tap with solar-panel hot water but no shower-heads, equipment for bowl washing and perforated plastic bottle hand-held, rinsing off (minimalist showers). There could be sponge-baths made by cutting down old water butts or barrels, in which case grey water could be disposed a short distance away
rushes or straw plus rugs on the ground clotheslines screens giving somewhat casual privacy and at least one more discreet cubicle for the modest.” A. Washmeister

6.0 Recycling & Waste:
Collection areas in each neighbourhood
Central collection area with marked wheelie bins near site vehicle exit
Separate large area for wheelie bins and straw bales from toilets, marked with hazard tape, also near the site exit

7.0 Council Liaison:
High praise for the team and the good working relationship they established with the council. Had there been a bigger council liaison team, or one less overworked by police liaison duties, we wonder if we might have been able to secure vehicle access much quicker as it wasn't until the end of the camp we found out just how much the council wanted to push the police to allow vehicle access. We could have combined forces at the beginning had we known this. Generally, we feel a larger group of people communicating with the council could help to ease the load on key individuals, without presenting a confusing 'front'. We suggest than the primary "Council Liaison Co-ordinator" opens channels for individuals with specific responsibilities within the councils and their corresponding Climate Camp topic co-ordinator to get together to act autonomously, for example one each on health and safety, recycling and composting, water. This worked well at CC 06.

8.0 Clearing Up AKA Tat down:
In general, Neighbourhoods organised their own tat downs very effectively, and enough volunteers stayed on to make tat down, with the Tat Bays system, pretty smooth. Make announcements at the site meeting asking for volunteers, starting a few days before the official end of the camp. Take names, neighbourhoods and contact numbers for volunteers and driving license details if they've got one.

9.0 De-brief
Try to get together with site team members as soon after the event as you are able (and can bear), to write down any lessons learned from the experience of running the site. These notes could provide a basic structure for this process. Afterwards, it's worth sending your debrief round to other site team members and committed volunteers. One person could collect feedback and ideally add any salient point to these notes.
Make sure you keep contacts of any volunteers and crew members who expressed an interest in helping with future camps, together with information about their relevant skills and interest. Data-protection issues could be addressed or ignored here, depending on the tone of the event. We didn't think about them at Climate Camp Site office 2007, and haven't had any problems with people resenting being phoned up, when they gave their information freely!
Information is power. Use it. Share it.