Decide who decides, before the day

Escalation during an event does not work.

During an event there is no time to find somebody, explain a situation and await an answer. Decisions that have not been delegated in advance either do not get made or get made by whoever is present without authority, and both outcomes cause problems.

The workable arrangement names, for each domain, who decides on the day and what their limits are. Someone decides about the schedule, someone about safety with the authority to stop, someone about spending up to a stated figure, and everybody knows who they are.

The safety authority is the one that must be absolute and must be exercisable against commercial pressure. A person who can stop or delay, whose decision cannot be overruled by whoever is losing money, is a structural protection and it has to be established before it is needed.

It is also worth naming deputies, since the named person will at some point be dealing with something else. A chain of two is enough and it prevents the common situation where everything queues behind one exhausted individual.

The other authority worth establishing in advance is who speaks publicly. During an incident several people will be asked questions by attendees, staff and possibly media, and a single named person with the information is the difference between a consistent account and a set of contradictory ones circulating within minutes.