Resource
Pre-event control room checklist
What should be settled before doors open, in the order it usually goes wrong at a UK event.
Details
- Last revised
- 10/02/2026
- Reading time
- 5 min
- Cost
- Free, no email required
Ordered by what causes the most trouble when it is missed, rather than by department.
Before doors
- Licence conditions transcribed into the checks that will actually be run, with intervals set.
- Call signs issued, radios tested and counted, channels confirmed, spares held.
- Capacity figures and the counting method agreed with whoever will be asked for them.
- Wind and weather thresholds taken from each structure's own supplier plan, not a standard number.
- Staffing minimums per position, and who is authorised to stand a shortfall down.
- Medical, welfare and lost property arrangements, and where each register lives.
- Escalation: who is called, at what point, on what number, and who deputises.
- Control room contact list printed as well as stored.
At doors
- First radio roll call completed and any non-responding call sign resolved.
- Counting started and the first figure recorded, so the baseline exists.
- Log opened with the event start entry, naming the controller on duty.
During
- Check rounds run on interval and recorded, including the misses.
- Handover written at every change of controller, from the record.
- Any variation to the plan logged as a decision with a name against it.
Read next
Or see it running
Vantra Control Room does all of this as a by-product of the shift, rather than as a document written afterwards.