Organising an event is not an easy process. Anyone who’s had to plan a surprise birthday party can attest to that! But if you do find yourself in the role, then there are a few key responsibilities you need to know about. Some are legal responsibilities that will get you in trouble if you don’t follow them, while others are just things you will need to do behind the scenes to put on a good event. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, it should give you a good place to start in your event planning journey.
Manage The Planning Process
Yes, we realise that just sounds like repeating your job description. But as the organiser, you will need to be involved in pretty much every element of the planning process, even if you aren’t the one directly doing the task. After all, the organiser is ultimately the one who is responsible for everything that happens at the event legally, which means you need some level of oversight. A few aspects of the planning process you need to keep an eye on include:
· Allocating the budget
· Securing the venue
· Developing the food menu
· Designing and printing event materials
· Working with subcontractors
Keep An Eye On The Budget
Before the planning process even begins you should put together a budget for your event. This should cover absolutely every aspect of your event, from venue to insurance, drinks and first aid, plus a reserve amount to cover any last-minute issues. Get quotes from multiple providers to find the best prices and create a realistic budget for putting on the event from start to finish. Throughout the planning and organisation process, you will need to keep an eye on how much money you have spent, and how it tallies against your budget. You may need to cut costs along the way, but you should always make sure you’re not cutting essential elements as a result. For example, insurance is a non-negotiable cost that you may be able to reduce by shopping around, but you can’t cut it altogether.
Insurance
Speaking of which, one of your responsibilities as the event organiser is to ensure it is properly insured. This means speaking to your insurance provider and making sure that either your standard business insurance covers the event as planned, or arranging for specific event insurance to cover the day of. Most insurance providers will be able to arrange this kind of one-off cover even if you aren’t insured with them for everything else, so it’s always worth shopping around to find the best cover for the best price.
Organise Medical Cover
If you are running any sort of event in the UK, you are required to provide the appropriate facilities to ensure both employees and attendees can get immediate attention if they’re injured or taken ill during the event. In other words, you need to provide some form of medical support at the event.
The form this takes will depend on the event type, size and risk factor, and could range from having one first aider in place to a team of 3 trained paramedics on site.
How To Decide What Level Of Medical Cover You Need
Of course, not all medical cover is equal, so while we can tell you that you need medical cover for your event (it’s the law after all), we can’t tell you what level without further conversation. What we can tell you is that there are a number of things you should consider when deciding what level of medical cover you need at your event. That includes:
· Previous event data. So if you’ve run the event before, look at the data and see if there were any accidents or casualties, and what the rate was.
· The type of event. For example, are you putting on a classical music concert or a rugby match?
· Whether it’s indoors or outdoors, and what type of venue it is.
· Audience profile. For example, is it going to be families, mainly young people, or rival factions of a random?
· The size of the audience. At a rough estimate you need a minimum of 2 first aiders per 1000 people.
· The kind of activities being done and how high the risk factor is
· The time of year. This is particularly relevant for outdoor events
Once you can answer all of these questions, it’s much simpler to approach a company and find out what level of cover you really need.
At Canopy Medical Services we provide event organisers with a flexible, cost-effective service that covers all of your medical event needs. We can provide just 2 staff up to 15 depending on the type of event, along with overnight cover with mobile HQ. Our team can help you perform your risk assessments to plan out your level of cover, and make sure you’ve ticked all of the legal boxes along the way. For more information, just get in touch with the team today.