Planning an event requires juggling a thousand different tasks and priorities. It means keeping clients on track, delegating different pieces of production and ensuring it all comes together. Your first step in preparing to make this happen should always be to create your corporate event management timeline.

Staying on Schedule with a Quick Turnaround

Planning a timeline for a corporate event will help you stay on track and keep everyone else on the same page. Communication and coordination will be much easier when you have a clearly laid out timeframe and set of priorities to take care of.

This sort of detailed event production timeline is becoming more expected and essential in the event production industry, as event schedules are tightening and giving you weeks to prepare where you might have had months in the past.

Production and Logistics

The simpler you can make it for your master schedule the better, but you’ll also need to create multiple timelines for the different pieces that have to come together and the stakeholders responsible.

Your event production timeline should lay out exactly what needs to be done and when for the material set-up of the event. This should be a very in-depth document with information about all of the different equipment, where it will be and when, and who is in charge of each step.

Client Management Outline

Another timeline should deal with big picture considerations like contracts, deposits and budgets. This is the timeline you and the client will use to make sure the large tasks and payments all happen when they’re supposed to.

This corporate event management timeline will help keep the client on time with their approvals and payments as well, both before and after the event. Knowing when they should expect different budgets and proposals will help improve communication as well.

Planning the Event Itself

After you’ve tackled your extensive event planning checklist leading up to the event, you’ll also want to develop a detailed timeline for the program of the event itself. This timeline will include scripts and all of the information about lights, audio, and other logistics involved to keep things running smoothly during the event.

Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, and that’s OK. The point is to make a plan and be as prepared as possible for when things inevitably change. The timeline will be your guide, even if things don’t happen exactly when you hoped.

Read more from Sullivan Group to learn why timelines are important when planning a corporate event! Contact Sullivan Group today!