February 2020

EVENTS
Getting the
Plan on Paper
Planning, ignore it at your peril says Carl A H Martin
SEVERAL YEARS ago I was asked to be
involved in a question and answer session
at a festival association meeting. The
question of planning arose and the more
the discussion developed the more blank
faces I saw. I was shocked.
Basically, there is a good reason for
planning an event; it ensures the artistes/
athletes and/or other participants and the
audience are safe, comfortable and happy.
If people walk away talking only about the
event, and not the venue or infrastructure,
you have achieved your object and people
will return for future events. A win/win
situation.
Since working at the Scottish Event
Campus (SEC), Glasgow, in the eighties
(yes I am that old), whatever the event
we produced a General Information (GI)
document. This document included all the
available information about the event and
was revised on a regular basis up until the
event itself. It was shared with anyone and
everyone that could possibly be involved
both within and outside of the organising
company.
Glasgow was not the first to issue a
document such as this, Wembley has to
take that credit, but we ‘relocated’ and
improved it. Whoever worked with it and
moved elsewhere took it with them, all over
the world. Please God GIs / event schedules,
or whatever name is now given to them, are
still in use!
A GI is not a bible as there always
needs to be flexibility in any operation,
but it is there on the day in case one or
more essential people are not, due to
circumstances beyond their control. That
way others can take responsibility and be in
ownership of all the facts.
I strongly recommended you develop a GI
for any of your events, but before you begin,
you must get as much information on the
requirements of the event as possible. The
event coordinator (or whatever fancy title
you give them) is the essential person when
planning and running the event, they are
what the title says, the coordinator. While
they will not have the specialist knowledge
of a lot of those involved, they ‘coordinate’
those needed to produce the event and are
the ‘go to’ person, the one person to deal
with, which saves an awful lot of confusion.
Of course if the event is larger, or running
longer hours than is safe for one person
to control (a very important element
to consider), there will be a team of
coordinators, but they are still the essential
core!
Once a decision to go is made, whether
the event is promoted in house or
externally, planning/design meetings
should be started immediately, with a
minimum of one a week at least, and
continue on a regular basis.
Those that need to be included from day
one will be those involved in managing
the event and operationally such as those
responsible for power, sound and light,
water and waste, staging and production,
venue cleaners, in house security, the
relevant stewarding/security companies
and box office personnel. Also include
outside agencies such as local authorities,
the police, ambulance and fire brigade and
other relevant folk. If it is a sports event, for
example, then you need to involve the local
and national, sometimes international,
associations (speaking from experience,
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