Event Management Plan and Delivery on the Day

If you have planned your event carefully, there should be few surprises on the day. However, nothing can be guaranteed, and you need to have a plan to cover any uncertainties, such as wet weather for an outdoor event. This may be called a number of different things:

• Event management plan
• Contingency plan
• Event manual
• Operational plan

But they are all the same thing - an overview of the whole organisation of the event to ensure that all those involved in the organisation of the event, internally and externally, know what is going on, where, when and how, and what needs to happen if things don't go to plan.

The basic contents of the plan are as follows

1. Event Organisation
2. Event Management
3. Risk Assessment [See Risk Assessment for Event Organisers]
4. Emergency Management
5. Major Emergency Reporting
6. Media Handling

See the F & E Operational, Management and Contingency Plan template for a breakdown of headings to help you complete the document.

Sometimes elements of the plan that relate to health and safety will need to be separated and completed more than once, for example where your event has a number of sites/locations within it.

Your master plan should cover all elements of the plan but sections 3 and 4 may need separate sub-plans relating back to the master plan, but being very specific to that particular area of the site. By breaking the information down into sections, you will be able to find it quickly.

Some of your organising and site staff may only need sub plans if they are specific to one part of the site, so it would be counter-productive to ask them to wade through the whole plan. Make sure the whole team has a detailed schedule of the day - if you have more than one venue, make a separate timetable for each one. The organiser should at all times have with them a detailed schedule of every minute of the event, as well as a list of contacts and suppliers' telephone numbers for last minute problems. A simple check list is a useful tool to make sure every task has been carried out according to plan.

Some people prefer to write two documents an event manual and a health and safety plan. It is personal preference and the choice of the organising committee/group, but the key thing is to make sure that everything is written down.

This makes it far easier to find information quickly, and it also provides a mechanism to ensure that where individuals are in charge of certain elements, the different strands are pulled together and there is no duplication or gaps in the organisation of your event.

You can produce a checklist, see example, to ensure that all elements of your event are covered; this provides you with an 'at a glance' guide to who is responsible for what, and the basic contents of your management plan.

Evaluation
Evaluation is an important post-event task, but information needs to be collected on the day. Evaluation is an invaluable means of measuring performance against planned outcomes, and is also something you will be required to undertake for larger funders, such as Arts Council England or Sport England (these bodies will often supply you with specific formats and guidance for reporting). [See Monitoring and Evaluation]

Consultation
To gain as full a picture as possible of your event, consult a wide range of people involved, verbally or via questionnaires and comment sheets. Try to get feedback from: visitors, staff and volunteers, contractors, specialists, security and police, other emergency services, local authority officers, local community representatives, partners and sponsors.
Try to find out where your visitors have come from - are they local, or have they travelled from outside the region? You may also want to collect contact details to add visitors to a database so you can inform them of future events - you need to ask their permission to do so and comply with the Data Protection Act.