Perfecting Project Management Practices for Music Festivals.

Having a team of experienced project managers working for a music festival is essential for successful implementation. Although frequently called other titles, it is the Festival Director and operations teams that function as project managers. What are the key skills and practices required by project managers working in the complex, high-pressure festival environment.

Unlike traditional commercial organisations that use project management day to day, the music festival has a fixed, immovable deadline, ready or not. The project management function in festival environments needs a blend of technical methodology and adaptability where tight deadlines, large temporary workforces, multiple stakeholders, and regulatory pressure need to be managed. The festival workplace is not ideal for rigid frameworks and requires flexibility where key elements like communication, preparation, and calm leadership are essential, often during chaos.

Fixed Dates and Critical Path Planning.
Music festivals announce their event dates up to year in advance and this gives the operations team a fixed date to work backwards from. This style of project management requires critical path planning where multiple tasks are dependant others being completed on time. The knock-on effect of delayed tasks can instantly be visualised on overall schedules. It is essential when building the critical path of tasks that sufficient additional buffer times are built in to allow for delays which are common in the festival planning cycle. Although a Festival Director may have overall control of the critical path plan each task will be assigned to a project management function with responsibility for on-time delivery. Progress along the critical path needs to be monitored in real time so that remedial action can be taken without delay.

Communications.
Strong project management in the festival environment relies on effective communication between everyone involved where stakeholders and decision makers are continuously in the loop. Project managers will have to deal with multiple stakeholders all of whom can impact on schedules and can include contractors, volunteer managers, artists, local authorities, local police, health and safety representatives, marketing teams, vendors and sponsors. Event management software systems like Festival Pro enable critical path planning and can act as a central repository for data and documentation for all stakeholders where schedules, information and task progress are accessible and updated in real time. Project managers need to have clearly defined escalation paths to notify responsible individuals about potential task delays.

Contingency Schedules and Risk Management.
Given the fixed date associated with music festivals it is essential to build in contingencies to planning schedules which help manage risk. When building risk scenarios organisers can rank tasks and actions by impact and probability (risk register) which helps determine the seriousness of each scenario. Typical risk categories for a festival can include adverse weather, power failure, artist cancellation, transport delays and licensing or compliance issues for example. Project managers can run exercises for each risk to see the likely impact, and this helps to determine how much buffer time is required for that task as well as documenting a robust mitigation plan and assigning ownership.

Budgetary Control.
The role of the project manager is to deliver tasks on time but equally important is achieving this within allocated budgets. During the planning phase tasks can have an ‘impact assessment’ assigned to it which indicates the likely cost should it be delayed. Organisers will allocate a contingency fund which is usually intended for use during emergencies close to or on the event live dates. Project managers should avoid, if possible, ever needing to access a contingency fund during the planning phase. If costs are changing during the planning phase it needs to be fully documented with justifiable reasons so that the data can be used for future event planning. The financial budget plan relies on anticipated expenditure on contractors and artist fees plus revenue from ticket sales and sponsors which indicates likely cash flow during the planning phase. Expenditure and revenue must be monitored in real time and project managers have a key role to play in feeding information to finance teams on any anticipated changes.

Post Event Assessment.
After the festival dates an assessment of lessons learned and planned vs actual can help to build more accurate plans and critical paths for future events. This post event review is an essential part of a project managers function as it enables them to better manage tasks and activities for future events.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. 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, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by StartupStockPhotos via Pixabay

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