HiRadMat (High Irradiation to Materials) is a new facility at CERN constructed in 2011. It is designed to provide a test area where the effect of high intensity pulsed beams on materials or accelerator component assemblies can be studied. The HiRadMat facility is situated in the former West Area Neutrino Facility (WANF) target tunnel and is about 35 m below ground. It takes the fast extracted beam from the long straight section LSS6 of SPS, the same used for the TI2 injection line to LHC. For 2012, the first year of operations of the facility, 9 experiments were scheduled and completed data-taking successfully. The experience gained in operating this unique facility, along with highlights of the experiments and the instrumentation developed for online measurements are reported.