Critical Path Management for Music Festivals.

The number of factors and time critical activities involved in planning and running a music festival can be huge. How can festival organisers use critical path management to plan and control their festival logistics to ensure that everything happens when it should to deliver a quality event on time and within budget.

Critical Path Management sometimes referred to as Critical Path Analysis (CPA) or the Critical Path Method (CPM) is a common form of project management, This lends itself well to the planning and management of all music festival logistics planning. It is a scheduling procedure that depicts a project and the sequences of tasks required to complete it known as paths. Once the paths are defined, the duration of each path is calculated to identify the critical path, which determines the total duration of the project. The critical path is often shown as a timeline on an easy to read Gantt Chart. 

Time Critical Festival Planning. 
For any music festival planned for a greenfield site everything must be transported on-site and set up as well as being broken down post event. Typical activities may involve the stage construction, security fencing erection and installation of office and toilet facilities. Other tasks may involve the installation of power generators and Wi-Fi for example which all need to be checked and tested. Away from the physical festival site there are other activities like artist line-up confirmations and announcements, tickets sales schedules, volunteer recruitment and training plus vendor and sponsor sales. Once all activities are defined organisers need to determine which ones need to happen when and whether or not a particular activity is on a critical path where a delay will impact on other activities. Installation of security fencing for example would usually be one of the first activities as the site needs to be secure before any valuable equipment arrives on site.

Software Applications.  
There are a number of software applications available that specifically assist in project management and the creation of critical paths. Doing the planning of any large-scale music festival is really not possible without a good software platform because the resources required in project managing the festival manually would be too large and inefficient. A good solution will provide easy to use activity definition set up and task allocation so that items can me moved in a dynamic fashion allowing a quick visual reference to the knock-on effect of a delay in a particular activity. Having this data ensures that remedial action can be taken to rectify any problems and prioritise tasks on the critical path to help deliver the event on time as planned.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The software includes a production module for project management that gives a visual representation of all festival tasks with dynamic calendars and task allocation. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

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