Meeting and Event Contingency Planning

When you're planning your annual conference or other important meetings, make sure you don't forget to plan on how you will deal with disruptions that might impact your event. The articles below may be helpful to you in creating your meeting continuity plans.

When planning your event, don't forget your emergency action plan. (Item #1)   Do you have a plan to deal with strikes? (Item #2)   Regardless of the reason or the season, planners must be prepared and have a clear plan, which starts with your hotel contract negotiations. (Item #3)  

See how the Learning Disabilities Association overcame a floor collapse and snowstorm to avoid canceling its annual meeting. (Item #4)   The safety and security of attendees is your responsibility. Here's how you can reduce risk. (Item #5)   This risk assessment checklist can help you figure out where your risks may be. (Item #6)  

As always, we look forward to hearing your comments & insights regarding business continuity. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover, email me at [email protected].

Bob Mellinger, President
Attainium Corp

1. How to Develop an Emergency Action Plan for Meetings & Events

No matter what the event, whether social or professional, you must have a plan in place in preparation of any type of emergency that may hinder your event's success, as well as put any attendees in danger. An emergency action plan is a written and enforced document that will ensure the safety of everyone involved, and must be put together with attention to every detail.
http://www.ehow.com/how_6679027_develop-action-plan-meetings-events.html#ixzz16rfD9TJw

2. Contingency plans key during strikes

As a meeting or event planner, it's your job to try to anticipate every possible scenario or disruption that could impact your event, from power failures to airline shutdowns. But one disruption that's often hard to predict is a hotel or convention center strike.
http://connectyourmeetings.com/2010/11/16/contingency-plans-key-during-strikes/

3. Contract Talk - The Hotel Audit

What can go wrong? Let's start with the current economic turn down, which impacts travel and meeting budgets. Then we can factor in unstable energy costs, which affects attendance. Of course, we can't forget the record setting mergers and acquisitions taking place in corporate America and the fall-out of management changes, postponed product launches and often reduced company profits.
http://www.meetingsites.net/index.php/contract-talk-the-hotel-audit

4. Double Emergency

Sheila Buckley and her staff at the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Pittsburgh, had to do some quick thinking and fast acting to keep its annual meeting from being canceled after concrete flooring at the venue, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, collapsed. But unfortunately, they couldn't do much about the major snowstorm that would hit Pittsburgh during their convention.
http://meetingsnet.com/risk-management/case-studies/meetings_double_emergency/

5. Take Charge of Attendee Safety

Meeting planners have a legal obligation to provide a reasonable standard of care "while performing any acts that could cause foreseeable harm to others." That means taking some critical steps to assess the safety and security of all aspects of your meeting and minimize risk for every off-site event you plan-both domestically and internationally. In fact, crisis preparedness and risk management are becoming increasingly important aspects of the planning process, and for good reason.
http://meetingsnet.com/risk-management/attendee-data/take_charge_safety0429/

6. Risk Assessment Checklist

Security experts provide this checklist of their critical steps for assessing and mitigating risks at meetings. How many of them do you already do?
http://meetingsnet.com/risk-management/attendee-data/risk_assessment_checklist0429/