Numbers attending

At the planning stage you will have estimated the numbers of people attending the event and you will know how they will arrive. If they are all coming by train or on foot there is little problem, but the likelihood is that most of them will be arriving car. They will require help in finding the site and getting parked, after which they will need help getting out of the site and finding the road home.

Contigency plans

While the estimate of the number of people who are attending is quite critical, unforeseen circumstances, such as the cancellation of a neighbouring major sporting event, or a particularly clear and sunny late autumn afternoon can as much as double attendance.

The organisers must make allowance for greater numbers than originally planned for, by arranging for overflow car parks (with appropriate signs available), or be prepared to shut the event gates and see all those angry motorists and the lost revenue drive off along clogged roads.

The traffic manager must know what is going to happen if it rains and the car park field is flooded. They must know if the landowner is likely to ban you from using the fields because the fields are soft due to heavy rain and he doesn’t want them cut up by heavy use. What happens if the main car park site is unavailable because there has been a fire at the farm? Try to cover all eventualities and make sure that your contingency plans will still allow the event to continue under most circumstances. (For more information on contingency planning, see Chapter 24, ‘Emergency and normal procedures’.)