Event planning with Ann Bedford

You're listening to "It's All in the Plan", a brand new Fortnite podcast. Make sure you subscribe and be the first to hear about new episodes. It's All in the Plan, the podcast for event-management students brought to you by Ashley Garlich. In this episode, exploring the event planning process with Anne Bedford. Hello and welcome to "It's All in the Plan", the podcast for event-management students. What I guess today is Anne Bedford and is head of event planning and delivery for St. John Ambulance. Among many other things, St. John is the largest medical provider for events in the country, providing first aid personnel and equipment to over 20,000 events every year. And St. John is responsible for the planning of all large events for St. John, which means you not only have to work with event organizers in helping them develop and deliver their events, but also has to deliver the medical side of things, which is a significant logistical undertaking all of its own. I'm sure we will get into some of the specific details of what that entails, but to give you some statistics, the Virgin Money London Marathon, which St. John has been a part of since its inception in 1981, has 1,300 volunteers, 45 ambulances, 45 treatment centres, 250 tubs of petroleum jelly, 25,000 clusters, 300 bottles of oxygen, 4,000 ice packs, which is a huge amount, I'm sure we will discuss with Ann now, so welcome Ann. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So perhaps a good place to begin would be to perhaps ask you to describe what for you would be a typical event cycle that explains what you have to do to bring all of those things to life in an event. That is a very big question and it really depends on the customer that we are dealing with. As you mentioned, we have over 20,000 events every year, so something that I always say to the planners that I have within the team is that we have processes and plans and organisations standards that we need to have as part of our planning and delivery cycle, but when you're thinking about taking on any event, I kind of say to think of it the same way as we train our clinicians. So we always say to our clinicians, treat the patients not the illness. So when a planner starts to work with a client, you need to treat the client not the process. So don't try and shoehorn them into what we want them to do, listen and understand what they want, and bend and tweak our processes to fit that. And that is the best way to start for us when it comes to an event cycle. You started off by talking about the London marathon, and this is something that we have done for nearly 40 years now. The cycle that we have with London marathon limited is one that we hold very dear to us and one that we've nurtured for a very long time. And the cycle for an event like that starts way before you would imagine it would kind of be as soon as the event is finished, it's already the planning for next year has started. So it is a constant cycle for us. And it's the same with a lot of our other events, and I'm sure as we start talking, as we go through the planning and the post-event processes, that is our cycle that we like to work through in terms of keeping everybody involved and listening and learning each time. So I wonder, and actually that's a really good comparison there, you've got London marathon a huge event, and you said that the planning for next year starts pretty much immediately after. So we're talking about a whole year cycle, I mean how might that compare to say something quite small, kind of how quickly can you do things versus how long would you like to do things? So for that we are guided on the client, and there are certain things, certain events that St. John ambulance do, which are very last minutes. We are very fortunate as an organisation to be invited and asked to do certain events. And some of them do come out of quite tragic events. So the example I'll use is for the funeral for PC Palmer. He had a lying in state and a funeral that was taken snippets from a state funeral. And so that is something that I'll see that St. John has done in the past, but there is obviously always tweaks to events that we do. So something similar, so for example, tripping the colour. We would plan that event for potentially four to six months to make sure we're engaging with the right people, taking that time to write the plan, getting all the bits right, but for the funeral for PC Palmer, we had probably a week to do that, which is at the top lines and saying kind of plan for the customer, not for our plans. And we obviously had all of those touch points in place that we like to do, have a planning meeting, write the plan, get the plan checked, engage with all of our internal stakeholders. And so it's just speeding up that process and getting that quick turnaround on a process that we normally would take a while to do. We've talked there about process and one of the things that we really like to do in academia is to sort of break things down into stages and have these sort of theories that look at these very distinct phases of an event plan. And I wonder, is that something that you're able to do or is that not how it is reflected in reality? Do you have distinct phases when you look at the planning from the beginning to the end or is it just one long single process? I think that we do go through certain phases and it depends how we get that event. So something like the London marathon that we've done for years, we take it as a red that's in our calendar and we begin the planning process six months ahead of that to start getting the meetings in the diary. When we're getting something new, we do look at certain things before we get going. So I will use the example of when we took on London Pride. So that was an event that we had done many, many years ago for reasons I don't know, for my time. They changed medical provider, but then they came back to us a couple of years ago. And we simply don't have our use to doing events in central London, it's not an alien thing to us. We've got partnerships with the people that were involved, but for that particular event, there is a phase at the very beginning where we do need to look at our intentions for that event, our strategic plan of how we're going to deliver that. And within St. John England, what we do for that is we get the key stakeholders involved from a very more strategic level to say, this is the event that we've got coming in. This is the basic overview. These are the things that we're going to need to understand. As part of this very first hand in stage, very first stage that we do, there's a lot of conversation with the customer to understand what kind of cover they want from us, what their expectations are, and it's taking all of that information to our key stakeholders internally and say, can we deliver this? Do we want to deliver this? Is this something that we need or want to be a part of? And it's at that point that those key internal stakeholders can say, yes, we're in it. We've got it all just saying, actually, this is a red flag for us. Before we go ahead, we need to make sure that we have decided this, this and this. So for example, if we're talking about the London Pride situation, we had everybody on a call, being like, this is what we're going to have to achieve, where are the red flags and our communications team flagged up and said, this weekend, all of our radio networks are busy. We need to make sure that we have a plan in place, otherwise it's a no-go for us. So that was something that we needed to make sure, right at the very start, that that red flag was out of the way before we started the detail. So that's really interesting, because we sort of often think about this idea of the initiation of a project, and as part of that, it's about exploring the feasibility of an event. And it sounds like that's a very similar thing for you. And I wonder, how important is it that that takes place before you actually begin the planning of the event sort of, I suppose, what would the impact be if you didn't do that? What would then happen later on? It is incredibly important to have that initial conversation, and there are so many different elements to putting together an event for the medical cover with St. John ambulance. There are so many intricacies that when you just look at an ambulance driving at an event. yng Nghymru'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r gwybod'r a wneud yng Nghymru o'r gweithio eich sydd â'n gweithio o'r gweithio i'n gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio i'n gweithio o'r gweithio i'n gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o' a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio. A'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio. A'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio. 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A'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio. A, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio, a'r pwyd i'n gweithio. Absolutely, yes, that is exactly it, but we are still delivering the same service, whether we are doing a 60,000 capacity concert at Hyde Park or a church fate in the suburbs somewhere. That's at the very beginning, and I mentioned that we've got certain processes and procedures, that is what we rely on to ensure our high quality care, when those two first ages are going to a church fate in a small village, they still have the right equipment, they've been given the right trading, they're wearing the right uniform, and they are representing St John Millets in the same way as we would when we stood at the side of the mouth for troops in the colour, like they are in our minds, they are very much the same delivery, but how we deliver that is exceptionally different in terms of the customers are very different, the needs of those customers are very different. Yes, when it comes to licenses for large events, the medical cover is a big part of being granted a license by a local authority, so we need to ensure that we're giving that customer all the information that they need for that large scale event, and yes, it is probably the same for a smaller event, we can rely on more generic materials to be able to support a smaller event. I think that's a really interesting question I'd like to come to in a moment, but before then you've already used a word that we use a lot, this idea of stakeholders, and it's very much something that perhaps, you know, I've ignored till now, is the people side of things rather than the process. I wonder who are the key people that you are involved with, and could you explain your relationship with those people? Yes, it really depends on if you're talking externally or internally. Our external stakeholders are kind of everybody that is involved in that planning process, when we are invited and contracted to be part of it, then we then form part of their planning group, and it's depending on what kind of event or where you are in the country, what that group is called. We could form part of their safety advisory group, the SAG, or we could be part of, I think it's only in London, they call it an LOSPG, which is a licensing planning operations group, but we form a very active part within those planning groups. So within there will be the local authorities, other emergency services, our colleagues from the NHS or ambulance service, and it is very variable of who else sits in that group. So New Year's Eve in London, we are a part of, so the Coast Guard sit within that group, people from the Royal Parks sit within that group, because that event is impacting on them, the river is a huge part of the fireworks. So it is right that the Coast Guard is a part of that planning group, when you're looking at something like a concert in Hard Park, obviously the Coast Guard doesn't need to be involved in that, so not impacted. So our stakeholders are based around that planning group and who is involved within the planning from an organisers perspective. So what are the challenges with that? Because that sounds like some very big personalities, if you can sort of put it in those terms. I wonder whether, how do you balance what I imagine must be quite a lot of conflicting interests? So the one thing that we all have in common is delivering that event, and when you're looking at stakeholders like the ones I just explained, I understand what you're saying is that there is some big personalities, and some are contracted to pay them and be there, and some are there because of their statutory obligation to be there. Others are the event organisers, and part of that, and within an event organisers there's probably a couple of people that attend that look after different parts of that event. So if we go back to the New Year's Eve example, from the organisers perspective, there is the person who is representing the businesses and residents of Central London that are affected by the fact that they close the city for the day on a very important day of the year. So how we ensure that we are a valued part of that group is not relying on our previous relationships, not relying on our reputation that comes before us is attending that event, yw'n i'n mynd i'n sory, yna'n nolegi'r yw. ac yw gweithio sy'n gweithio i gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n g a'r fawr i'r fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i fawr i faw Mae'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hy yn y fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mewn. Mae hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n gwahanol. Mae hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n mynd o fwy hynny'n gwahanol. ac mae'n gwneud o'n gwneud ac mae'r gwaith i'n gweithio, ac mae'n gweithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r g a'r i'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n gweithio sy'n mwyfnod. ac mae'n gwneud ysgwnau'r ysgwnau hynny, a ysgwnau'r ysgwnau ysgwnau'r ysgwnau'r ysgwnau'r ysgwnau'r ysgwnau ysgwnau'r ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau ysgwnau y a'r gweithio'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r gweithio a'r cael yr yw'n gweithio, ac ymwyr i'n gweithio, ac ymwyr i'n gweithio, ac ymwyr i'n gweithio, ac ymwyr i'n gweithio, ac ymwyr i'n gweithio. The conversation that we had to be very very strong and said this is this is the wrong placement for your treatment centres. We need to be really thinking about the travel distance from one side of this arena to the other. We won't be able to be carrying people this far through this dense crowd. We need to look at positioning some of these the other sides and looking at the positioning of it better. We have a lot of skills behind us and also we have a lot of very experienced people within our teams that actually turned out to have a really easy conversation to have. One could potentially be quite difficult. They've already printed their maps, already configured their barriers, already done X, Y and Z. We're like this isn't going to work for these specific reasons and you are putting your patrons at risk if we don't start moving these around. It was a difficult conversation but one that had to be had. I wonder how common is that where you find that your expertise? I mean I recognise that event organisers of all types can't be experts in everything and a medical provision is perhaps one of those areas. Perhaps without asking you to name any names I wonder how common is it that you find that perhaps your expertise and experience is conflicting with what you're being asked to do by the event organisers? Yes and I think there being a contractor and so this is where we have to be very delicate with how we go forward with our planning and often something that starts right off at the beginning of during the intention of if we're going to take on the event and often unfortunately things do come down to money that we are a service that they are paying for. And some promoters or some organisers have more budget than others. It's a very delicate balance of putting in the bare minimum which is within within the guidance to actually what is best for that event. So if you're looking at a concert for example in a certain venue or in a stadium or something like that numbers and size of venue dictate X number of first aiders but what we can bring to that conversation is well this event is actually on two floors in this stadium. The distance between walking from this point to this point is going to be X amount of time and it's bringing that very detailed examples into we think that the medical provision needs to be increased by this much to give a better service to the people that we are that we are supporting the patrons and the guests that coming to the event. Now that that introduces in a way something that you mentioned briefly earlier and that's the importance of reputation because presumably you can maybe have that conversation because of the reputation or how important is in a way that almost the marketing and the PR of this versus the delivery. Now more than ever the PR that comes out of events now everybody is a journalist that is more of a player here. Now everybody can post straight online and it is really interesting that some events that you have feedback from the general public where you see something online or they've messaged the organisers saying that this person was let on the floor for hours waiting for someone to arrive. Looking at our logs it's normally maximum like five minutes but when somebody is sat there and someone's not reading or something for the general public that will seem like an absolute decade. So I think the PR and need to be providing expert and quick medical cover is more important than ever which is the client I spoke about earlier when they want John to be really brash really in your face that they had experienced some negative feedback in the past had a bad experience and so that is why they changed their mind of how they want their medical cover to look. So that is where the PR of what came out and then has changed how they think about medical cover. I'd like to shift slightly and think very much about kind of how you work and in a way the distinction between the planning function and perhaps the actual delivery function on the day. i'w i'r gweithio. will find an event planner will be different or will be different people from those that are delivering the service on the day. Often as well, the planning team are much smaller in terms of numbers than the numbers of people that end up being involved in the event. And I want to sort of how do you go about approaching that in terms of your teams doing the planning and then almost handing that over onto those people that deliver our planning structure is something that we tweak and have honed over several years. I've been working with St John at this nearly seven years now and every time we plan something or every cycle of events, we find a better way, a more improved way of talking and dealing with each other. And one thing that is more apparent than ever is the right people being involved at the right time. So how we go about our planning is ensuring that once, as I mentioned at the beginning, we have that strategic sign off from our internal stakeholders, the heads of all of those departments to say, yes, we are in and they hand it over to the doers to then begin the planning on that. And so it is the role of the planner assigned to that event to be the custodian of all of that information. And they are bringing information in from outside and they are pushing it out to the right people internally. And a really, really key point for that planner is also to be really in tune with the other planners throughout the organisation. There is no point doing it all on your own because then you end up, kind of, in competition for the same things. So I will try and explain briefly how we do our planning meetings and processes and not confuse you too much. So how we set up our meetings is a model that is kind of taken from a local, how a local authority set up their sag meetings. So what normally happens is that there is a day that they have that is their planning day. And then they have all the key stakeholders sat in that meeting. And then event organisations come through and they meet with all of those stakeholders. They do their sag meeting with the local authority and then they leave and then the next meeting comes in. With St. John ambulance having so many events and the same people needing to be in all of those meetings, we got to a point a couple of years ago when there were people who were just in meetings back to back. They were confusing this event with that event and it was just getting a bit much. So taking inspiration from our external stakeholders our friends and local authorities were like, right, this is a really, really good way of setting up how we are going to plan 20,000 events a year. So this is done on a regional basis. So before I joined the regional team, I was from the national team I was regional in London. So this is what we do in the south of England that on a Thursday night, because we're dealing with volunteers, so it has to be a time that everyone is available. Those key stakeholders from our internal team, so we're talking about fleet, logistics, our radio communications, our clinical teams, our youth representatives, our medicines team, all of these people know that on a Thursday night is planning meeting nights, and then we schedule in at least one meeting per event. If it is big, like the London marathon, then that has four. If it's slightly smaller, then it may just have one or two, but we use this time to go through the same agenda, the same, the same conversations happen for each event, and probably at four events happen or event meetings happen on that night. And what that does for us as an organisation is we are linking in all of those events that are happening at the same time to learn from each other, to be like, oh, we just have this conversation actually about an event that's happening next weekend. Let's not have that same conversation again and use that decision that we've already made. So we're not making conflicting decisions between teams. And we found this really, really useful. And when we come on to talk about post-event stuff, that really, really comes through in this style of meeting. And what this also allows us to do is the management for a really busy weekend. So if we think about the first weekend of July, so for Central ambulance, we are tapped out event wise. In Central London, we've got London priority, we've got concerts in Hyde Park, we've got Wimbledon, we've got something in Lewish and we've got something somewhere else that bringing together all of those managers that are going to be working on the same day to say, let's have a conversation between us. Let's get to know each of us plans a little bit, helps an organisation of the size of St John, do colossal things over one weekend, but still very much in tune with each other. And that is the role that we put into our plans, that they are the custodian of that, engaging externally, internally and bringing those teams together. I mean, I think that is a good point to shift our focus, perhaps, on to what happens after the event, all too often. When the event finishes, those involved, breathe a massive sigh of relief, look forward to putting their feet up, and certainly to attendees, they go home and perhaps forget about everything else that's involved. I wonder how important to you is what happens after, what do you do in terms of when the event is finished, and then how does that feed into what you do? So the post event work is as important as the planning, and I always say this to the planners within the team that you can't just neglect and move on, you need to go through these processes. So post event work has a couple of lines for us, especially as a medical provider. We have obligations to feedback to external parties, and a lot of people are very interested in what we do at an event. So when you're looking at something like Notting Hill Carnival, from a health perspective, that's got a lot of people involved in it. There's a lot of stakeholders in terms of all the hospitals that are affected by Notting Hill. The local authorities are very keen to understand what went on during that event, and also working hand in hand with our colleagues at NHS England, they are reporting that upwards. So from a reporting and feeding back perspective, we have an obligation to our external stakeholders and also to our event organiser that has contracted us. So ensuring that we have all of the right patient reports that we know who went hospital, when they went, that is a really, really important piece of work for us. When you're looking at something like the London Marathon or another run similar, they have a duty of care to the people that have paid to be a part of that event that are running in that event or cycling or whatever, the needing to go back to their next of kin to tell them some quite devastating news. It's very important for us as their medical provider to ensure that we have given them exactly the right information that they need. If we miss a digit on a run another and they ring the wrong family, the repercussions of that is just colossal. So from a reporting point of view, post event is really, really key for us. But from an in-term perspective, this is something that we really, really try and plow a lot of energy into. So a lot of our events we do every year. So it's really, really key that when we're not going to do something again for another 12 months, that we don't forget what we did a year ago. So something that I introduced a couple of years ago was out of a debrief. We would look at doing an improvements list. This is something that I took inspiration from one of our event organizers, actually, because at the end of an event we ask, we ask everybody for their feedback, understand what went on with all of our internal external bits and pieces and the amount of feedback that we get is huge when we've got something like the London marathon with 2,000 people wanting to give us their opinion. We need to really be looking at all of that information and categorising it and making sure that we are listening and learning from everything. But there is absolutely no way that we can change everything in one go. So we try and look at the top final six things that are the biggest recurring requests for improvement or something that we know we need to do better and that will then form part of our plan next year for those events that are yearly. But what is really key for an organisation like St John Ambulance that do lots of events very similar, but for very different people, is learn about that general learning, that something that we do for a concert in Hype Park, that we've learnt about, well, you need to do X, Y and Z, that we take that learning to a concert that we do in Victoria Park, that we're not losing lessons from one event to another, that we have this general organisation, general learning as well as individual event learning. And then perhaps one final thought that we can wrap up on is where do you see things going? Both from an event planning point of view are what are the changes in terms of how event organizers are operating? I mean, of course, they're sort of wider industry factors. I don't know, where's the event industry going at? Are we talking about post pandemic? Well, yeah, quite a post-corona world. A very interesting question, and it's very talking to different people who are involved in different events. And I think that what is very key is, is events need to come back in a way to, there's nothing that brings people together like a good event. And the London marathon is an excellent example of this. The euphoria that comes after people watching the London marathon, the amount of people who start tennis lessons after watching Wimbledon, there's something about large events like that that really bring people together. So I think that there is a real need and a push for those types of events to come back and live music and concerts and theatre, etc. And it is a very difficult balance between doing something safely and doing something for the sake of it. So we're having a lot of conversations with a lot of our clients about how they can still do what they need to do in the world that we now live in. And it's very interesting for I spoke to a gentleman from the North who runs a massive run in the North. He was like, I'm at the minute, the amount of people that run this race. I have to socially distance them. There's start line is bigger than the race. What am I going to do? And so I think that it's using the tools we've got to still be able to put things on. And even for smaller events, it's very interesting. And in the side of our treatment centres, for example, we'll now need to be a lot bigger. So we've got so a few small events that are coming online at the moment, which is really fantastic to see small events coming back slowly, but surely. And it's quite difficult to look at the size of the tent that we would normally put in. So we're three by three for two first aiders. I was like, well, hang on a second. How can they help in their social distance? And then a patient comes in with a need double triple the space. So yeah, a lot of it isn't impacting. What are the skills that an event planner is going to need to succeed in that? What do you think makes a great event planner? A good event planner, a great event planner, as you said, listening, being able to communicate, but really, really listening, and not only listening, but understanding, and kind of being able to pick out those things that are the unexpected thing to pick out. So what I'm trying to explain is there's one event that we deal with and they have a charity of the year, which you would think that wouldn't really affect their medical cover, but it's going into that meeting and hearing of a flyaway comment being like, oh, I'll tell you the year that this year is, it was talking heads. And that is a mental health charity and picking up on that tiny bit of information and then being understanding the consequences of what that means for us. In the fact that they're inviting people with mental health issues to their event that they're going to be placed in X, Y and Z location, that actually that that might have a knock on effect for our cover and the calls that are going to be a tragedy that we need to start thinking about putting some mental health nurses in strategic locations to support the people that are coming to that event. I said right at the start that we treat the customer not the plan, that it's really understanding what we need to provide. Do they want us in their face? Do they want us to discreet what type of people are coming to their event? What's what's the venue like? Like really, really listening and and thinking a little bit outside the box? On that note, we shall end. I want to thank my guest today, Anne Bedford Head of Event Planning and Delivery for St John Ambrance. Thank you. And join us again for another exploration into the interesting world of event management in this podcast. It's all in the plan. The podcast for event management students was written and produced by Ashley Garland.