There is a moment at every event where the pressure spikes. A contractor misses their dock window. A sponsor’s VP is asking pointed questions. Three teams are waiting for a call that only one person can make.
That moment exposes your operations’ maturity.
Either the system absorbs the pressure. Or people start improvising. And while improvisation can be creative, it is not a strategy.
A strong event operations playbook is a set of decisions made in advance. Calm decisions. Clear decisions. Decisions that remove hesitation on site.
What a functional playbook should look like
Under stress, nobody reads long explanations. People scan for clarity. Then they act. So your playbook should answer three things in seconds:
- Who owns this?
- What are they authorised to decide?
- Who takes over if it goes beyond their scope?
If that is unclear, your team will escalate by default. And escalation takes time.
For example: Picture this. An attendee arrives with an unpaid status. The system flags it. The rule is clear. They are routed directly to finance. No supervisor is called. No debate at the desk.
Or a photo is missing from the profile. Badge printing is restricted. The attendee is guided to the help desk. The frontline team does not hesitate because the boundary was defined weeks earlier.
The calmer the desk feels, the more work was done beforehand. And calm is key.
Design for speed, not hierarchy
Authority Mapping
Escalation lag costs money. You see it in overtime hours. In vendor penalties. In sponsor goodwill slowly eroding.
Every operational function should have:
- A named decision maker.
- A clear financial threshold that they can approve.
- A named backup.
Registrations. Marketing. Operations. Payments. Each with one accountable contact.
If a payment dispute surfaces at the registration desk, the team should know exactly who in finance owns it. Not send it on a tour of managers who were not expecting the call.
Communication needs redundancy
Radios are useful. Until a battery dies or signal drops in a multi hall venue. So layer it like this:
- Runner protocols.
- Pre-assigned meeting points.
- Printed contact cards.
The Event Safety Alliance recommends layered communication systems as non-negotiable for large-scale ops. If your operation depends on one communication channel, that’s not efficiency, it’s optimism.
Vendor and venue escalation should be just as defined:
- Named account manager.
- Named operational contact.
- Named emergency number.
And build buffers where risk is predictable. A badge stock reserve is not only smart, but also basic risk management.
Move from reactive to predictive
Reactive operations consume margin. Proactive operations protect it. The shift starts with how you treat your own event history.
Run structured post event reviews
Not just what went wrong, but where decision-making slowed. Where authority was unclear. Where teams hesitated. Those insights should update the playbook, not stay in someone’s notebook.
Pre-event risk heat mapping
Before each event, map the most likely risks based on past experience, venue complexity, vendor reliability, and programme design. Rank them by likelihood and impact. Assign a response owner for each.
Then define what early warning signs look like.
- If registration queues start building fast, thirty minutes before doors open, who is authorised to open additional counters or redeploy staff?
- If late technical changes are requested close to build up, who decides whether they are accepted, delayed, or costed differently?
Clarity at those moments protects both margin and relationships.
And one more exercise that pays off every time
Run a two hour tabletop simulation six weeks before the show. Senior team only. Walk through a realistic pressure scenario. A system outage. A delayed shipment. A sponsor complaint escalating publicly.
It will expose gaps that looked perfectly fine in the planning deck.
Keep it alive
A playbook will not prevent every problem.
But it ensures that when problems appear, they are absorbed by structure rather than by stressed individuals making heroic guesses.
And heroic guessing is rarely part of the budget.
A playbook ages quickly since venue contacts change, vendor teams rotate, and internal roles shift. So make sure you:
- Assign one named owner. With a backup. Maintain version history. Keep one single source of truth.
- Include practical parameters. Maximum shift length. Overtime thresholds. The point at which additional resources must be booked.
- And schedule a quarterly review. 45 minutes. What changed? What failed? What needs refining?
Info Sources
1. Event Safety Alliance – ANSI ES1.6 – 2025 Event Safety – Communications: https://eventsafetyalliance.org/standards-guidance
2. PCEB – ISO 31000 Risk Management – Principles and Guidelines: https://pecb.com/en/whitepaper/iso-31000-risk-management-principles-and-guidelines
