The perfect bump-in doesn’t exist!
Event bump-in can be an event manager’s nightmare if you’re not thoroughly prepared. Even with every ‘t’ crossed and every ‘i’ dotted, event managers should always expect curve balls during their bump-in experiences!
There is no full-proof system, if there was, we would know about it.... There are tips, tricks, and hacks to make your bump-in experience as stress-free as possible, but most of the time, stress is simply part of the process and at times you feel like you’re drowning!
HOWEVER! We are not about to let that happen to you and based on our own personal experiences, we are going to give away our tips and tricks to make bump-in a lot easier for your next event! Starting with…
Hiring Help!!!
An event manager can be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of tasks even without bumping in to worry about. One way to minimise the stress and overload of tasks is to hire help.
With the help of a professional, bump in teams handle everything from temporary flooring, traffic control, signage, AV, Production, food and drink vendors and much more. Leaving you time to concentrate on other important tasks.
If your event is large, chances are you have hired specialist infrastructure, equipment and furniture. There’s also a very good chance the companies you have enlisted to help you have their own staff who can assist with bumping in your event. We strongly recommend working closely with these companies and piggy backing off their knowledge and experience several weeks out from your event.
The most important component of this is to coordinate the timings of their arrival and departure from the event. So, for example your staging should be setup first before the AV specialist arrives to make sure speakers and screens work.
Site Plans and Run-Sheets are essential
Think of it this way. The site plan is your map and your run sheet is how you find the treasure. By treasure we mean, to not stuff up!
A site plan isn’t created overnight and chances are you’ve spent hours fixated on getting it absolutely perfect to scale and to be signed off by councils, police chiefs, community groups and so on...especially if its an outdoor event.
Now it’s time to make it happen and put it into reality. Just like a builder, one nail at a time….how cliche!
The run sheet is essentially your instruction manual on building your event infrastructure and apart from having it on you at all times, key staff should have a copy on them also.
You can find hundreds of run sheet templates online, pick one and make it work for you. At the very least, your run sheet should include each day's activities with times, description and staff responsible. For example;
6am - Arrive on site
6:15am - Staff meeting with work crew
6:30am - Work crew orientation
7am - Traffic control on-site (ABC Traffic Management)
7:15am - Fencing setup to mark off from public (TNT Hire)
7:30am - Staging truck driven in (ABC Production)
We also advise being organised prior to bump-in day. You can’t be setting up your perimeter fencing if your hire company didn’t drop them off the day before or the morning of bump-in. So word of advice is to contact all your suppliers prior to bumping in the day with a time, contact, and location to drop things off. Be prepared for contingencies if they run late.
What are your contingency plans?
Every good event manager should be able to think on their toes and adapt to a situation and solve a problem on the run. If this isn’t you, find a new career.
Bump-in days are full of surprises. Anything from power outages, faulty equipment, missing staff, injuries and accidents, delayed arrivals of special guests, and our all-time favorite, inclement weather!
Can all cause absolute mayhem, but are all things that happen and happen regularly that you should be prepared for.
Contingency plans are actually tricky to plan for and a lot of the time it tests your ability to think on the run using resources you might already have on-site, calling on one of your suppliers to help you out or if you have to….jump on the tools yourself and fix whatever the problem is.
We will say, to allow some time for any issues like this and just remember, it’s better for problems to arise during the bump-in, than during the actual event.
Test, Test…TEST!!!
You have just spent hours or days setting up for your event, bar’s ready, infrastructure set up and looking great, food vendors are on site ready to cook, you can see attendees lining up ready to check in.
And then someone screams “The powers out”.
2 hours later you get it back up and running...turns out your generator ran out of fuel, someone had to go get fuel, fill the generator and start it up again. So for 2 hours people have queued up outside, starving, thirsty and disgruntled because they paid money for a ticket and now want a partial refund.
Don’t learn this lesson the hard way and as ICE CUBE would put it, “check yo’self before you wreck yo’self!”
Finally, revise your run sheet at the end of bumping in to ensure you haven’t missed anything. You should also send a reminder/courtesy email to all suppliers to thank them and remind them of bump-out day and times they need to be on-site, just in case you don’t have time during the running of the event to check up on this.
GOOD LUCK!
