EPMS

Planning and Control Documentation

It is one thing to plan the event it is another to communicate this plan to the various stakeholders. Correct event documentation is vital to effective management. The advantages are:

• It communicates the plan of the event to the staff and volunteers
• The documents provide an ongoing record of the event's progress
• They provide a history of the event planning which may be used in any liability issues
• They provide a written basis on which to improve the methods of event management
• By standardising the documents, different events can be compared
• The production of the documents creates a discipline in the planning
• The documents impersonalise the plan - that is it takes it out of the hands of any one person and it becomes separate from any individual.
• The documents proved a link to other departments within a corporation such as finance and with the sponsors.

One of the most common fears in event management is what happens if the event manager falls ill ( 'run over by a bus' is the colloquial saying). As long as the details of any event are in the head of one person there is this risk.

The results of the project management process are documented as various schedules, responsibility and action sheets. Each event company has evolved their own style of sheets. They are called by various names : production schedules, task lists, output matrix, timelines, run sheets, critical paths, checklists, event order, milestone lists, show schedule, show sequence ... The terms used generally reflect the past work experience of the event manager. However they all converge into six planning and control documents:

• Contact Sheet
• Responsibility Chart
• Task or Action Sheet
• Work Package
• Checklist
• Run Sheet or Production Schedule - (the implementation schedule) which concerns the program of task at the actual event and can be further subdivided into specific Run Sheets - such as Rehearsal, Technical, Shut down ...

Templates for all these documents can be found on the CDROM - they can be downloaded into Word and used for your next event. This is an enormous saving in time.

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Copyright W.J. O'Toole