RedBull, known for being the third largest drink in the beverage industry worldwide is more than just ‘selling energy’ and ‘giving you wings’. They have created a business supporting athletes, hosting athletic events, creating sports teams, and much more.
The Santa Pod Raceway is located in Wellingborough, UK and is the UK’s only permanent quarter-mile drag strip. The venue hosts 80 events annually and is the home of the FIA European Drag Racing Championships, the fastest & loudest motorsport on Earth.
We caught up with Yusif Basil, Motorsport Consultant for RedBull, who plans the RedBull Car Park Drift series and Max Frost, Events Coordinator for Santa Pod Raceway on how OnePlan has changed the game in planning their motorsport events.
Photograph: Drag Racing via Santa Pod Raceway
Planning before OnePlan
Finding an event planning software that provides up-to-date GIS mapping and accurate event tools can be difficult. Thankfully with OnePlan, event organizers can map every fence, event worker, security, and much more.
Before using OnePlan Yusif and his team used Google Earth and a general sketching software to draw up rough plans of the raceway. Not only was this incredibly inaccurate but time consuming, and difficult to share with others. He mentions, “We used Google Earth and Sketch Up to draw the track. Our main challenges were the online sharing platforms.”
Max and his crew previously spent hours on end measuring wheels and drawing rough outlines from the track. The time and work previously dedicated to this was causing more effort than needed. He says, “A lot of time was spent with boots on the ground, measuring wheels, bits of paper and dodgy drawings, trying to plan out the layout of each event. We primarily used a rough layout in other software that gave us an idea of the site layout, but these weren’t to scale so working out layout could be difficult.”
Thankfully Yusif and Max found an all-in-one planning software! Max found using the software was easy to learn and implement in his planning process saying that OnePlan is an, “It is an intuitive event planning [software] that is easy to use, website based software that allows you to create detailed plans, layouts and measurements for your events.”
Time Savings with OnePlan
Yusif and Max realized they needed to change their event planning methods as their original tools were not cost or time efficient. Yusif previously struggled with updating various suppliers and vendors. Once he switched to OnePlan he said, “OnePlan’s online accessibility and instant updates allowed me to keep everyone in the loop.”
Photograph: Drag Racing via Santa Pod Raceway
Max, who plans about half of his events for large crowds, found it difficult to keep spending time changing the layout of the track with boots on the ground. He mentioned that OnePlan allows him to plan his events from the comfort of his desk saying, “OnePlan has enabled us to measure out, layout and redesign pit layouts without ever leaving the desk. Once we have an established plan, we will then use boots on the ground to mark out these areas, knowing that our ideas will fit within the given space on site.”
Yusif and Max are joined by other event planners including Silverstone, Tour of Britain, Beirut Marathon and many more who experience time efficiencies by using OnePlan.
Game-changing Planning Tools
Finding a platform that can accommodate the various needs of your event can be complicated. Thankfully OnePlan allows event planners from unique industries to create their events seamlessly. Yusif mentions that the object variety is a game-changer is his planning saying, “I often use fences, water barriers, vehicles, and other objects that help me visualize my event.” OnePlan has several event packs that can be found in the ‘More’ menu category in the left-hand menu of your OnePlan map view. Event packs include festivals, street parties, triathlon, cycling, and many more!
“The intuitive design features and structure of OnePlan makes event planning easy. With the extensive database of insertable infrastructure, tools for measuring, and zoning capabilities, there really is no situation that OnePlan can’t handle.”
Yusif Basil
Motorsport Consultant, RedBull
Max shares with us that some of his favorite features are the measuring tools that accurately help him and his team scale his plans saying, “The measuring tools and 1:1 scale in particular are incredibly helpful within our event planning. Whether it be simply measuring from Point A to Point B or placing to scale, custom sized objects onto our site to ensure our layout works.” OnePlan’s route tools and transport calculators allow planners to input the average speed of a vehicle to predict travel time and plan for attendee arrivals and departures.
Photograph: Drag Racing via Santa Pod Raceway
Another standout feature in OnePlan is the crowd management tools. These tools allow event planners to safely and efficiently determine how many people can fit in a designated space allowing for fluid and functional crowd management. Max enjoys customizing the density of an area saying, “Another key feature that is useful when planning our events is the ability to select custom crowd areas across our site to work out crowd capacity based on selectable ‘people per m2.”
OnePlan’s sharing features allows event planners to update their team, suppliers, vendors, and stakeholders in real-time. Max goes on to tell us that these features have tremendously helped his team collaborate saying, “Secondary to this would be the ability to work on the shared events together in real time with fellow users within the company. Having the ability to see the amends that each other are making in real time, greatly enhances the ability to plan events.” OnePlan allows organizers to share their event plans using the presentation export feature saving your plans as a PDF and allowing you to share or view on any different device or platform.
The view-only links and vendor management tools can also help event planners to streamline the communication process. The view-only link gives planners the ability to generate a shareable view-only link to your event plan, so that anyone can open it without modifying your event plans.
Using the vendor management features allows event planners to input information on each object placed such as: vendor name, cost, availability, power requirements and much more.
“OnePlan is a definite upgrade for online communication. The easy to use software helps me measure and scale my routes and objects as well as helping to manage multiple stakeholders."
Max Frost
Events Coordinator, Santa Pod Raceway
RedBull and Santa Pod Raceway’s experience using OnePlan features the importance of using an all-in-one comprehensive software to plan events. With OnePlan, Yusif, Max and her teams are able to easily and precisely map their event layout and share amongst different departments and partners. Start planning your next event and sign up for free today!
