Early planning and communication between the key building and event personnel are crucial. Events providing technical riders should do so at their earliest opportunity. As a building manager you should, through experience, realize that when event personnel are reluctant to provide you with technical data in a timely manor, they are generally ill prepared or don’t know the answers to your questions. A special effort should be made to get this information in the discussion stages as soon as possible. Early planning helps to avoid un-preparedness and surprises that have to be dealt with in a short period of time.

 

As part of the planning function not only staging requirements such as size, loads, rigging requirements and configuration but full floor plans, seating charts, sound and light equipment locations and control panels should be part of the pre-planning exercise. A clear understanding up front should be arrived at as to the times the doors will open, plus the starting and ending time of events. It is critical that all technical assistance calls for personnel are clearly established as well as all other support people. Parking lot attendants, ushers, ticket takers, food service, box office personnel, police, security as well as operational staff and housekeeping schedules are all critical to the production of a successful event. The earlier these items are known and distributed to the various departments the more time you can allow to deal with unknown problems that always crop up in the presentation of an event.

 

Last but not least, compliance with all safety regulations are critical to the successful staging of an event, including fire exits, levels of lighting required, emergency procedures, pyrotechnic licenses and other such measures.