Plans to make your major events successful. By Dusty Saine UNIVERSITIES:
Venue managers have a tremendous weight on their shoulders when planning for crowd control, the safety of players, coaches, and thou- sands of fans. I interviewed two individuals that work with venue man- agers on a daily basis planning to ensure that the fans remain safe or as safe as possible in light of new and changing forms of terrorist attacks. - University of Arkansas Police De- partment. We discussed the good, the bad and the unavoidable when planning for a major athletic event on a university campus. Planning
for large sporting
MAKING PLANS
are very expensive and, believe it or not, there isn’t enough grant or federal money for everything.
I also discussed with them about some of the things that made their
events often involves numerous im- portant players. Communication is the number one most important aspect in planning a successful event. With so many people involved in the planning process of a major event, it is easy for someone to forget to divulge information that is critical to the event. have their place but nothing trumps a face to face conversation. They brought up some valid points about in-person conversations; body lan- guage is a form of communication as you can ensure people are en- gaged in the topic, you can clarify any issues that may arise during the meeting and you can make certain that everyone is participating. No other form of communication can cover all of those aspects. can cut one usher here, a ticket taker or two there, and surely we can get away with one less door for the event and save on wanding and bag safety but you are also creating a bad experience for your guests. Less in quickly and not properly follow the security protocol because of long lines and pushy patrons trying to enter the event. I ended up paying for a few extra people even when the promoter wouldn’t agree to it. To me, it was worth the safety of our guests and helped with our guest experience entering an event. As terrorists turn to motor vehicles as a weapon, it was important to the chief that bollards and other forms of equipment weren’t forgot- ten when budget requests were initiated. He informed me that he gets in hopes there are other sources of funding. Unfortunately, these items
“Everyone always gets bogged down in the details of an event, but you can’t lose focus and forget about the importance of exceptional customer service.”
to think about things not as common. The chief ’s answer was easy. He named personnel and accountability. Large football games at the University of Arkansas require large - trol, venue security, VIP security - gans told me that he has close to 20 agreements with other agencies to try and cover security for a game. He mentioned that others like to piggyback on the big game with additional events that sometimes
stress his personnel even further. As for accountability, the chief said when you say you are going to - es numerous other issues around that task if someone doesn’t follow through on their assurances. Cawood, on the other hand, brought something to my attention
that I didn’t think of. He spoke about the millennial fan and about the fact that sometimes there are too many chiefs on event day. He that don’t like to follow rules, will talk back to you with an attitude when you try to enforce the rules and are quick to throw you or your company under the bus with false social media posts. I’m sure all of us venue managers have faced this social media ob-
stacle at some point or another and it is a touchy subject. As far as too many chiefs go, Cawood tries to work through one point of contact for each event. This helps streamline all of the communications and keeps his company from changing plans or personnel several times through- out the planning process or even on event day. Planning for a major sporting event is often a major undertaking
- one always gets bogged down in the details of an event but Cawood stresses that you can’t lose focus and forget about the importance of exceptional customer service. Because of people like Chief Stephen Venue managers should take every opportunity to thank those men and women that make this possible. FM
Dusty Saine is director of events at the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in Kannapolis, North Carolina
IAVM 43
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