As pandemic conditions continue to change, do you feel that you must wade through wave after wave of information to seek answers and solutions to plan safe live events? We do! So we set out to compile all the knowledge we’ve gathered so far this year to create the 2021 Event Planning Playbook and provide the answers you seek to give your traditional playbook a massive upgrade. Ryan Costello, co-founder of Event Farm, unveiled and walked us through the Playbook during the third event in our series on Pandemic Compliance and Safety at Live Events.
Our two previous events focused on event safety best practices from a public health perspective and a legal perspective. For this panel, Ryan invited two event planners who, like him, are passionate about bringing events back safely: Ari Nisman, president and CEO of Degy Booking International and Degy World LLC, and Margaret Launzel-Pennes, CEO and co-founder of TBX: Total Brand Experience. During the virtual session, the speakers shared their candid thoughts and approach to the different components within the playbook, and below is the recap of the discussion.
Missed Part III of the Pandemic Compliance and Safety at Live Events panel?
Finding an event location
The Playbook provides three valuable tools for venue scouting.
- Reopening tracker that describes travel, gathering, and mask restrictions by state
- Event risk assessment planning tool
- 90-day global event tracker
These tools, updated in real-time, provide the information you need as you evaluate potential locations for your event.
Selecting an event venue
This section suggests questions to ask venues about compliance and safety, recommends venues with GBAC STAR accreditation, and advises following CDC guidelines on ventilation and sanitization.
The panelists offered tips about negotiating with venues and vendors:
- Only work with venues that agree to comply with your protocols and stand by your decisions on ejecting non-compliant attendees.
- Pay extra attention to indemnification and insurance policies. Everyone’s on the hook now because it’s difficult to prove where and how someone got sick. Because legal expenses are a concern, insurance is now 30-40% more expensive even though it doesn’t cover epidemics.
- You must have liability and indemnification conversations with vendors too. Like the venue, they must agree with your compliance protocols before you sign the contract. Smart, responsible vendors are asking for and doing the same things as smart, responsible planners.
Planning the event layout
Create an attendee journey site map so you can visualize the event layout. New focuses of concern include mask break areas, line management, and room/venue entry and exit. Event technology is your friend here.
- Notify attendees via text message when to arrive for check-in or other events. Stagger arrivals and departures so you can prevent crowds by controlling the flow of attendees in and out of the venue.
- Leverage virtual queuing during mealtimes, demos, registration, and product pickups.
Creating the event agenda
Agendas must accommodate new conditions:
- Smaller sessions since you can’t have as many people in one room.
- Attendees need more frequent and longer breaks so they can get relief from mask fatigue outside or in their room.
- Give attendees more time for staggered entries and exits, and to navigate a spread-out event.
Even with all these breaks, you must still provide the same content value as before.
Developing a transportation plan
Transportation services will look different with staggered pickups and drop-offs and buses not filled to capacity. You’ll need more buses, more loops, and, as a result, a bigger budget or a creative solution, like sponsored transportation.
Put technology to work here too. Text message specific groups to let them know when their bus is ready to board, and leverage access control along with RFID wristbands/credentials to track who and how many are on each bus.
Appointing a Pandemic Compliance Advisor (PCA)
Every event team should have a certified Pandemic Compliance Advisor (PCA) overseeing safety and compliance. The Playbook includes a job description of the PCA. When on-site, the PCA should only have this one role. They shouldn’t have other responsibilities that could cause conflicts of interest, for example, revenue concerns.
If you’re in charge of events, get your PCA certification so you know whether people in that role are doing the job as they should. The PCA is not typically the enforcer—that’s when you get venue security involved. The panelists agreed that compliance enforcement is subjective. You don’t want to falsely eject someone and find yourself in a lawsuit or with a PR nightmare.
Revising the safety plan of action
Event planners have always relied on a safety plan covering fires and other emergencies. The CDC has a checklist to help you develop a safety plan for these new conditions. You also need a compliance enforcement plan along with the usual emergency communication plan. Don’t forget, you can rely on your event technology to leverage text messaging for emergency communication.
Sharing an event safety code of conduct
Attendees, staff, vendors, and venue personnel must sign the event safety code of conduct during the registration process. This code represents an enforceable, emotional buy-in that you’re all in this together. The Playbook provides a sample event code of conduct.
Gaining attendee confidence
Ryan suggested using your event safety plan and protocol as a marketing tactic—a differentiator for your events. Your event code of conduct, FAQ, and website safety page will earn the confidence of attendees. A generous refund policy and health screening reminders will encourage attendees to stay home if they’ve been exposed to COVID or aren’t feeling well.
On-site health screening
Follow the CDC guidelines on health screening. Require attendees to answer health screening questions in order to be able to be checked into the event. A contactless solution is highly recommended to ensure the answers are tracked in real time by your check-in staff.
Mask monitoring
The CDC advises changing masks every eight hours. You can provide masks (another sponsorship opportunity) and use technology to track their dispersal in the event app. However, masks have become a personal fashion statement, so keep that in mind.
Tracking event, venue, and vendor staff
You don’t want someone showing up to work on the catering or AV staff who did not attend the pre-event meeting or go through a health screening. Have a plan in place to control authorized staff access to the event, including the ability to monitor daily staff changes for multi-day events so you can have a record for contact tracing.
Event budgeting
Now that you have the Playbook and know how to plan safe in-person events, how much should you budget? With new expenses brought on by new concerns, pre-pandemic budget templates also need an update. We’ve got you on this too. Our next virtual event panel will discuss budgeting on May 20. Stay tuned for details.
In the meantime, check out our Event Safety Toolkit to see how an event app can build safety protocols into your program. If you missed any of the previous panels, you can read the recaps of Part I (public health aspects of event safety) and Part II (legal aspects of event safety).