Mega Events / People

Briefing people who have never worked here

Assume nothing is known, because nothing is.

Event teams are assembled, often arriving the day before or the morning of. They do not know the site, the plan, each other, or the conventions, and they will not ask, because everybody appears busy and competent.

A short structured briefing addresses most of it: what is happening, where things are, who to contact for what, what to do if something goes wrong, and what is specifically not their job. That last item prevents a surprising amount of trouble.

The site walk matters as much as the briefing. People who have physically walked the routes, seen the exits and located the medical point behave differently from people who have been shown a map.

Written material should be short enough to be carried. A card with the three phone numbers that matter and the two things to do in an emergency is used; a twenty-page pack is not.

There is a briefing element frequently omitted that costs nothing, which is telling people what a normal day looks like. Staff who know what the expected flow is can recognise when something is unusual, and staff who have no baseline cannot, which means the early warning that would come from twenty people noticing is unavailable.