Guest post by Charlie Curtis-Jones
Planning an event is never easy at the best of times. Perfect preparation may prevent pretty poor performance but all your best laid safety plans may go to waste when hundreds of people descend on one space and the chaos begins. It’s not always possible to prepare for every eventuality.
The life of an event planner may call for a cool head and organisational skills that border on obsessive but there are certainly a few tools out there which can make life somewhat easier. In recent years, the 2 way radio has become something of a life saver for those hoping to keep an event flowing and ensuring everything and everyone is in the right place at the right time.
The key benefit of having instant communication at an event, and large events in particular, is safety. Having tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people in one place at the same time can be difficult to manage and it is even harder to ensure everyone arrives safe and goes home in one piece.
This is an area where 2 way radios can really help. The primary benefit of instant communication across a whole site is emergency response to an incident. If your event is a large one, say a festival, wedding or party or club night – or any place where alcohol is served – then it is paramount you are able to keep on top of everything and limit any possibility that someone could get hurt or cause damage.
Being able to contact either an on-site medical team or designated first-aid personnel instantaneously could prove to be vital, and that is something the use of 2 way radios can grant you.
Coupled with the ability to call upon medical assistance straight away is the fact that with mobile communications you are able to co-ordinate more efficiently, and therefore even further restricting time that could be wasted if an event organiser and other parties are not constantly instantly contactable. The fact signal won’t ever drop out like it does on mobile phones further increases their benefit.
Improving your control of a site and in turn your control of events, is undoubtedly helped by increasing communication.
If for example, an event planner is charged with organising a large wedding then it is not only important to make sure guests are in the right place and ready to move on to the venue or to the dining area to keep the day running smoothly to ensure everyone has the best day possible, but to also keep everyone safe.
If, say, caterers are setting up a dining area with cutlery, glasses and crockery and guests are coming in and out of the area then an accident is a real possibility.
Through communicating across a large space, an event organiser can ensure every person at the venue is away from the hustle and bustle and enjoying themselves while behind the scenes everything is set up seamlessly to ensure they have a day to remember for all the right reasons.
Before an event, those charged with organising it will put hours of planning into making sure everything runs smoothly across the day. Having the right communication device can be paramount in ensuring that these well laid plans are administered and adhered to ensure the safety of visitors and guests at any event.
Guest post by Charlie Curtis-Jones who writes for Brentwood Communications, a leading UK supplier of digital and analogue two way radio communication equipment.