How Event Professionals Handle Unexpected Challenges to Ensure the Show Goes On

There are occasions when things go a bit awry, and its testament to the professionalism and experience of your event crew that your show can still happen. An example is our recent experience on a relatively simple two day event in Athens.

We were shipping the entire audio visual production from the UK, and during the planning stages we recognised that we would need to allow plenty of time to allow the truck to drive across Europe.

It was the end of November, and the summer ferries that crossed the Adriatic had switched to their winter timetable, which meant they weren't running at convenient times to suit our journey plan.

Route map

To make matters worse, off season maintenance on two major tunnels had closed the fast routes through both the Swiss and Austrian alps. Border crossings add time, so we had to try to reduce the number of these and make sure the route matched what we had put in the ATA Carnet, a document that allows the temporary export of our equipment.

To compensate for all this, we scheduled an entire 7 days for the trucking, which should mean our truck should have a day in hand in case of any unforeseen delays.

The crew flew out on the Monday, for a Tuesday morning start on the rig. We had planned to rehearse with the client around 3pm on the Tuesday when we heard news from the driver. As he had traversed through Serbia, blizzard conditions held him for several hours, eventually forcing him even further east and into Bulgaria, where the unplanned border crossing and further foul weather had held him again, so he wouldn't be arriving until after midnight on Tuesday.

Our show was going live on Wednesday morning, and the client would not be happy delaying their rehearsal.

As Project Manager on the job, it was my responsibility to do what needed to be done, whatever that might be.

So, in the spirit of 'The show must go on', I contacted a local Greek supplier who thankfully had enough kit available to get us through the rehearsal.

We had all brought our laptops in our hand luggage, and fortunately the venue had a pair of projectors and screens permanently installed in the room.

So with the last minute help of a local Audio Visual supplier, we were able to run the 3pm rehearsal with the client, and almost everything was working exactly as it should be.

Our embattled driver finally arrived at the venue at 1am, and we offloaded the final few bits that we needed from the truck.

My heroic crew; Andy, Simon, and Jakek, got stuck in to the final parts of the rig and we were finished and into bed just before 3am.

Despite our general tiredness the following morning, the event went live on time at 8:00 am and we put on a great show.

It had been quite a stressful few days, and I was delighted to be finally waving the truck off at the end of the show. But in this game, there is no rest for the wicked, and my next job was in Madrid the following day, so I hopped on the flight and promptly fell asleep.