CHAPTER 3

THE CORPORATE EVENT OFFICE AND

DOCUMENATATION
INTRODUCTION
 The event office is the organizing unit for the event
 Size of the internal staff can range from a single
event coordinator on loan from other department to
full time team dedicated event
 Event office may be a site operation office at an
outdoor exhibition or a room in a modern air-
conditioned office building
 It can be a virtual office, with the info residing on a
computer in another country
FUNCTIONS OF EVENT
OFFICE
 PURPOSE
 provide centralized managerial and administrative support
to the event
 Gives visibility to the planning (gives credibility to the
event as well)
 Sometimes called nerve center, command center, or central
processing unit of the event
 Event office will concentrate on contracting,
scheduling, and allocating tasks and resources more
accurately
 Event office becomes focused on dealing with
operational issues and responding to any sudden
changes
DEDICATED EVENT OFFICE
 The concept of dedicate event office is gaining
acceptance
 For a corporation:
 Event office will support its internal seminars,
conferences, exhibitions, award nights and sponsorship
events.
 Larger companies realize that to obtain maximum
return on investment(ROI) in sponsoring events, it
would be wise to be more than were observers of
the events
DEDICATED EVENT OFFICE …
Cont
 Major corporation such as Coca Cola, IBM, Xerox
and Mars-have dedicated offices to manage their
events
 A dedicated staff/ office can save costs if a
company holds up to five or six large event a year.
 The event office consolidated all the expertise,
skills and knowledge that are often scattered
throughout a company –produce economy of scale
DEDICATED EVENT OFFICE …
Cont
 It is common for a company to have its event staff
work in partnership with an external event
management company
 This method ensures the client company receive the
right promotion and opportunities will arise if it is
fully exploited
 In an age of promotional clutter, having an active
role in the event offers a good ROI
 PHYSICAL LAYOUT OF THE
EVENT OFFICE
 Event function uses graphs, diagrams and illustration
to communicated aspects of the event
 It is the place to display all this information
 The walls of the event office will be covered by an
ever-changing collage consisting combination of items
such as:
 Maps
 Charts
 Lists and tables
 Reports and news
 Communication strategy
 PHYSICAL LAYOUT OF THE
EVENT OFFICE …Cont
 Event office walls may be used to assist
brainstorming and scenario building
 Sticky notes with ideas, resources and timelines
can be moved around to create different scenario
 EVENT OFFICE FILING
SYSTEMS
 The filing systems should be:
 Easily accessible and prioritized:
 Divide into functions (such as finance, contract
management, operation, etc.)
 Or by program elements (such as opening ceremony and
award night)
 Salable:
 the amount of work in both paper and digital format
 The filing system must be able to accommodate this
increase without being swamped by paper or data
EVENT OFFICE FILING SYSTEMS
… Cont

 Consistency structured:
 The paper and digital filing systems should be consistency
structured.
 The approach to filing information should have a similar
feel in both systems
 In this way, the staff will be able to file and find
information in both systems
MEETINGS,BRIEFINGS AND
TRAINING
 If there is enough space, the event office of its
associated conference is an ideal location for meetings
concerned with the event
 It provides a facility in which the meeting participants
can make focused, well informed decisions
 The standard rules of meeting procedures should be
followed if the meetings are to produce tangible results
 It is essential to have an agenda, sent out several days
prior to the meeting, as well as desired outcomes or
goals for meeting
CORPORATE EVENT OFFICE
LIBRARY
 The purpose of event office library is to store all the
info related to event
 It should include the event manual, operation manuals
for the office and communication equipment, software
manuals, supplier catalogs, workplace safety rules and
regulations, meeting procedures, past event reports,
and industry association publications
 The importance of data storage, easy retrieval and
archiving is apparent in the growth of the discipline of
knowledge management
EVENT OFFICE
REQUIREMENT
 The equipment and services will require the following:
 Computers, peripherals and an integrated software system
 Internet and intranet connections
 Filing cabinets. Event the paperless office must store and have to
access to contacts
 Whiteboard. An erasable whiteboard is essential in the ever-
changing event environment
 Video and or data projector for presentations to sponsors and
training sessions
 Communication systems. This could be made up of a variety of
communication devices, satellite mobile phones to handheld
radios, all integrated with the computer system
 Clean and light environment. The office must be a place where
people want to work
DOCUMENTS
 Accurate documentation is vital to managing a
event effectively and offers the following
advantages:
 The documentation communicates the plan of the
event to the staff and volunteers
 The documents provide an ongoing record of the
event’s progress
 They constitute a history of the event planning process,
which may be useful in resolving any liabilities issues
 They provide a written basis for improving the
methods of event management
DOCUMENTS… Cont
 Standardization of documents enables different event
to be meaningfully compared
 Producing the documents creates a discipline in the
planning process
 The documentation impersonalizes the plan- that is, it
takes the plan out of the hands of any one person and
ensures that it is separate from the individuals involved
 The documents provide a link to other documents
within a corporation such as finance, marketing,
human resources or some other event sponsor
The Main Event Documents
 The six (6) documents to plan and control the day-
to-day aspects of the event:
 Contact sheet, including telephone numbers and
addresses (both postal and e-mail)
 Responsibility chart, including key deliverables and
dates
 Action sheet, including the dates required
 Work package
 Checklists
 Run sheet
Contact Sheet
 It may take many forms
 From concise list printed on the back of
accreditation card worn around staff members’
necks to multistage lists of staff or stakeholders
involved in the event
 It should have a column for codes, since coding is
useful in sorting the list and will help staff
members quickly find the right contacts
Responsibility Chart
 Often as simple as a draft organization chart showing
the names of the various individuals involved and the
jobs are assigned to them
 The chart can be a matrix, with the names of the
persons, departments and teams.
 The level codes as follows:
 Rs: has sole responsibility
 Rj: has joint responsibility
 So: must sign off
 Cs:should be consulted for advice
 Sv: supervises
Task or Action Sheet
 The basic element for getting things done by
assigning specific tasks responsibility
 It is a highly targeted piece of information,
specifying the action to be done, by whom, when
and where
 The action sheet is the finely detailed output of the
systems
 It can traced back to the overall work breakdown
structure
Work Package
 It is the consolidation of the various tasks assigned
to a supplier or staff member responsible for one of
the event outcomes
 E.g.: an award dinner will need various pieces of
sound equipment
 This responsibility would be assigned to a sound
specialist
Checklists
 Simple checklist represents the combined
experience and knowledge of the event
management team
 It is the final document output of the WBS and
could be thought of as a list of mini-milestones
 A checklist represents the detailed categorization of
all the work that has to be done
Run Sheet or Production Schedule
 Essentially describe who does what when, is
known by many names
 The terms “run sheet” and “production schedule”
both refer to the event itself-the actual program
 It describe what must be done or what will occur
during the event at certain times
GENERIC EVENT SHEETS
 The basics of this type document are:
 Heading
 should have heading and show the event name
 Legend or key
 Often easier to refer to people by their initials rather than their full names
 If use this, should include legend or key showing to whom the initials refer
 Code
 the need for coding depends on the complexity of the event
 Help with cross referencing to other event areas such as budget
 Version number
 It facilitates correct communication by enabling all parties to be sure they’re
using the latest version of contact sheet, checklist or action sheet
 Date
 An additional way to determine the version of a document and also helps to
establish the history of changes made to a documents
OTHER EVENT DOCUMENTS
 Memos, minutes and e-mails:
 it should not be ignored in establishing a good internal
communication system
 Includes commitment or to-do-lists
 It should be concise and clearly written
 Meeting and briefing minutes are another method of
making a public the decision and responsibilities
associated with the event
OTHER EVENT DOCUMENTS …
Cont
 Reports and newsletters
 Formal method for monitoring the progress of the
event
 Snapshot of the various areas of event management
such as resources, schedule, cost.
 For larger events, an event newsletter sent out on paper
or over the internet or intranet can be an effective and
useful method of communicating with the cilent,teams
members and volunteers and provide event
cohesiveness
END OF CHAPTER 3
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