Every body wants something by a different date
A new outdoor festival is months away. Your team must prepare and submit a set of documents to several bodies, in general terms: the premises licence or event notice route your advisers recommend, the event management plan, traffic and road closure applications, safety plans for the relevant advisory group, noise management, medical and welfare arrangements, and plans the landowner requires. Each body has its own deadlines and meeting dates, and many documents depend on each other.
The production manager keeps a spreadsheet of dates. The event management plan is in its eleventh draft. The traffic plan depends on the site layout, which changed last week. Someone asks which version of the noise plan went to the council, and nobody is sure.
Why festival paperwork gets away from you
The work is spread across specialists, and the deadlines belong to other organisations.
- Different bodies have different deadlines, meeting cycles and submission methods.
- Documents depend on each other, so a site layout change ripples through several plans.
- Specialists and contractors write sections, and chasing them is manual.
- Versions are emailed, and the version submitted is not recorded clearly.
- Conditions and follow-up requests from bodies arrive by letter or email and are tracked in inboxes.
What a missed date or wrong version risks
A missed deadline can delay a decision you need, or push your plans to a later meeting, which squeezes the time for everything else. Submitting an out-of-date version confuses the people reviewing it and damages the trust you need with them. Conditions you did not act on can become problems late in the process. The detail of all this is a matter for your advisers and the bodies concerned; what you control is whether your own tracking is reliable.
It also depends too much on one person. If the production manager who holds the spreadsheet is off sick in the month before a key meeting, nobody else knows which contractor owes which section or which version went where.
A submissions tracker for the festival
- Each application or plan is an item with the body it goes to, its deadline, any meeting dates and the method of submission, entered by your team from the guidance you have been given.
- Each item lists the documents it needs and which other items it depends on, such as the site plan feeding the traffic plan.
- Each document has an owner, internal or external, with a due date set back from the submission deadline.
- Owners get reminders and upload drafts to the tracker, which keeps every version.
- When a dependency changes, such as a new site plan, the documents that rely on it are flagged for review.
- Submitting marks the exact version sent, the date and the method, and responses or conditions are logged against the item with actions and owners.
- A timeline view shows every item and date, so the production manager can see the next few weeks at a glance.
| Item | Depends on | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Event management plan | Site plan, medical plan | Production manager | Draft with changes |
| Traffic and road closures | Site plan | Traffic contractor | Review after site change |
| Noise management plan | Stage positions | Noise consultant | Submitted, version recorded |
| Landowner plans | Site plan | Site manager | Due next month |
The tracker holds dates and documents your team enters. What must be submitted, to whom and when is decided by the bodies concerned and your advisers; it does not give licensing or safety advice.
A planning season you can see
At the Monday production meeting, the timeline shows two submissions due in the next month, one document late from a contractor, and three plans flagged because the site layout changed. The production manager assigns reviews. When the council asks a question about the noise plan, the team can see exactly which version was sent and when. Conditions from each body sit against the relevant item with an owner, so nothing waits in someone's inbox.
Do you recognise this festival office?
- Submission deadlines are tracked in one person's spreadsheet.
- You are unsure which version of a plan was sent.
- Site changes are not carried through to dependent plans.
- Contractors' sections arrive late and are chased by email.
- Conditions from bodies are tracked in inboxes.