Lecture 4

Tools for Event Planning

What is being managed?

Venue Management. Legal Consultant. Public Relations.

Accounting. EVENT MANAGER. Catering Company.

Security Services. Agents. Staging Services.

 Phase 4 The planning phase should be used to solidify factors

Strategic like budget, venue and important timelines. Defining policy

and procedure.

Planning Useful tools at this stage are Gantt charts, and work
breakdown schedules as well as critical path analysis.
 Events can be viewed as a series of tasks (or
related ‘packages’ of work). A useful method
of organising these tasks is called the Work
Breakdown Structure (WBS).

A WBS involves breaking an event down into

Work Breakdown major tasks. These tasks are then further
broken down, a process that continues until
Structures a level of detail has been reached that is
deemed appropriate for the needs of an
event’s organisers.

Create an individual WBS on how you got to

class today from getting up this morning?
 • Resource requirements (e.g. people, money, equipment,
venues/facilities, materials, information and technology)
flow from the WBS.
Event • Decisions need to made as to what resources the event

Resource will supply and what will be obtained by outsourcing.

• It can be useful to create a worksheet on which you can
Requirements list the resource needs of each task/sub-task (see next
slide)
 Basic task based resource worksheet for an event

Labour Materials/ Date

Task (hours) Equipment Consumables Source(s) Cost needed

Prepared by: Date:

 Uses of the Gantt Chart

WHAT WILL THE COMMUNICATION PLANNING – VISUAL EVENT EVALUATION

GANTT CHART BE AVOIDING CLASHES OVERVIEW
USED FOR?
 Time Action Responsibility

•Running sheets act to provide a detailed listing of sub-tasks, when they

are to be conducted and by whom
•Running sheet 5th April: Venue 1

Running Sheets
 • Phase 5: Evaluation — During this phase, the professional
is tasked with
•determining whether the goals and objectives of the event
have been met.
• This can also be referred to as the evaluation phase.
Phase 5.
Evaluation
• This is a useful summary of the lifecycle of an event:
• http://www.eventplanninggroup.com/event-lifecycle
Phases of
Planning
Summary
 Before your next lecture:

Create a WBS for your own event

Practical Create a Gantt Chart for the event you are creating

Exercises Create a running sheet for your event