The Cheese and Chilli Festival runs four food events every year, with up to 9,000 people attending, requiring accurate event planning. Working with a small core team of planners, supported by sub-contractors for the event days, its Director Simon Stewart has to manage over 120 food vendors, licensed bars, fairground activities and live entertainment stages.
Simon started using OnePlan to plan these family events after realising its instant benefits compared to the CAD package he had been using previously.
Cheese and Chilli Before OnePlan
Before using OnePlan, Simon had to switch between different programs to create his plan for the Cheese and Chilli Festival – a situation experienced by many event planners. He used a separate excel spreadsheet to collate the overlay needed for each event, while images were cut and paste from Google Maps to draw a site plan with shapes in PowerPoint. This process didn’t allow for accurate mapping or data capture, meaning his plans didn’t meet the professional standards of the events.
Simon says, “With the software we were using before, the ability to scale wasn’t great. We couldn’t rely on it to be accurate and we would often get to site and have to make changes to layout due to plans not being to scale.”
A Better Way to Plan Events
Now Simon uses OnePlan to plan, map and procure everything he needs to create successful events. “OnePlan provides an accurate to-scale map and 100’s of items of event infrastructure that allows me to quickly build an event site,” he says.
First, he chooses a base map in OnePlan to start planning, confident that all items he places on the plan are in the correct location and are the correct size. He drags and drops event Infrastructure like toilets, tents, fencing, barriers, stewards and fire engines…those chillies are hot!
With accurate event planning, Simon can view every item of infrastructure in a bill of quantities and export this to share with suppliers. It has all the information he needs including item size, what3words address, cost, plus installation time and date.
"Using OnePlan I create accurate, detailed and professional-looking event site plans without the need for a complex CAD package."
Simon Stewart
Director, Cheese & Chilli Festival
OnePlan provides a comprehensive catalogue of everything Simon needs for his events. He’s been able to produce accurate and professional event site plans instantly after signing up.
“OnePlan is easy to learn and use, delivers professional looking plans and gives me advanced tools for event management. Now I’m confident of the professional look of my site plans and I have the details and data to answer any question.”
Ensuring Safety for Event Attendees
Safety for attendees is of paramount importance at these UK events. Using OnePlan’s Social Distancing Toolkit, Simon can measure crowd area, queue and evacuation calculators and emergency vehicle routes. This enables him to easily present the data in his risk assessments and management plans, making his event planning process significantly smoother.
"OnePlan gives us reliable safety and planning information that supports our planning, operations and stakeholders."
Simon Stewart
Director, Cheese & Chilli Festival
Where previously he had to send large files to stakeholders and suppliers, Simon can now share his event plan in one click giving them instant access to view-only or editable versions of plans. It’s a big time saver when dealing with emergency services, licensing, UK local authority SAGs (Safety Advisory Groups), landowners and suppliers.
Simon says, “Safety and stakeholder confidence is essential to get permissions and accommodate 10,000 people safely. OnePlan gives us reliable safety and planning information that supports our planning, operations and stakeholders.”
One Platform for Accurate Event Planning
Ultimately, Simon benefits from now having just one plan for everything he needs to run safe and successful events. OnePlan enables accurate event planning for his town and city events. And he’s able to provide feedback to help us continually improve OnePlan in future. “Finally, a system built specifically for event professionals to use.”
