The Post Assignment Card and Pre-Event Site Walk Checklist
Two pages, free, from the appendix of The Invisible Operation. The post card is what a volunteer reads in two minutes, puts in a shirt pocket, and works from for four hours without asking anyone. The site walk checklist is what you carry through an empty building the week before, so the problems get written down before the crowd finds them.
These are the two tools I'd hand a committee first. Not because they're the most sophisticated pieces in the book — because they're the ones that change something the very next event, with no budget, no software, and no one to hire.
The post card
Every person on your team gets one before the briefing starts. Index card or half-sheet. Name, post, a location specific enough that someone who has never been to your venue could find it — not "main gate," but "main gate, left lane, facing the parking lot." Their job, in one sentence. One thing, not five. Radio channel, or the supervisor's cell number if you don't have radios. The supervisor's name. And three situations, written plain, that mean call your supervisor: "Fight." "Someone falls." "Person trying to reach the arena floor without a pass."
The card has one job. Your staff member reads it in two minutes and knows exactly what they're doing for the next four hours without asking anyone. A card that fits in a shirt pocket gets referenced during the event. A two-page document stays in the truck.
Write them the week before. Read them at the briefing. Collect them at the end of the night. Fix whatever was wrong before the next event. That's the whole system.
The site walk checklist
Walk the venue before setup starts. Not during setup, not the morning of — before. Empty building, no clock running, an hour and someone willing to walk with you.
The walk has one purpose: find the problems before the crowd does. Most of what you find won't surprise you. It'll be things you half-knew: the spot where the line always backs up, the gate you can't see from the lot, the corner where people stop at intermission. The walk makes you write them down. That's the difference between knowing a problem exists and having a plan for it.
Five areas: entry and gates, the livestock corridor, crowd movement, medical access, and what the floor plan doesn't show. After the walk, every item you wrote is one of four things — a post that needs to exist, a sign or barrier that needs to be placed before gates open, a conversation with the venue or the stock contractor, or a briefing item. If you walked the venue and wrote nothing down, walk it again. There is always something.
“A committee that adopts four things out of this book and actually runs them is further ahead than one that reads all sixteen chapters and decides none of it applies.”
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Two pages, printable, from Appendix A and B of The Invisible Operation.
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Download the PDF →Appendix A and Appendix B are these two pages. The other six appendices — incident report, run-of-show sheet, debrief worksheet, binder-build session, the two-page written plan, and the radio protocol sheet — are in the book. The Invisible Operation →