Music Festival Site Ground Preparation and Planning Processes for Successful Events.

Experienced music festival organisers never underestimate the amount of work that is required in preparing a site before any construction or load in occurs. Remote locations selected as venues for music festivals are never the same, what are the essential steps required to comprehensively prepare a festival site.

Many music festivals use greenfield sites with no on-site facilities, and this presents a challenge for organisers when preparing the site for an event. Site locations are often selected based on cost and the probability of obtaining licences or required permissions along with a reasonable transport infrastructure.

Licensing Permission. 
Prior to consideration of a potential site organisers should engage with the appropriate authorities responsible for issuing event licenses to gauge the likelihood of obtaining permission for the proposed festival. If the authorities are in favour of the event, then organisers will feel more confident in incurring the expense of site surveys and layout plans. These plans will need to be submitted with any formal application for the event licences along with additional information on health and safety planning, community consultation and traffic management assessments for example.

Site Survey. 
Once a prospective site has been selected it requires a thorough evaluation to assess the usable space. Certain areas of the site may contain obstacles or hazards that could include vegetation, trees and farm fencing. Other factors that impact usability and access could be the terrain and drainage which can prevent easy access to the site. A professional assessment of the proposed site can be detailed and include additional factors such as soil type, seasonal variations along with wildlife and environmental considerations.

Layout Plans. 
Once a site survey has been completed the next logical phase is to plan the site layout based on the usable space. This will include preferred locations of stages, vendor zones, camping zones, bathroom facilities, medical centres and visitor parking areas. Consideration must be given to the likely flow of visitor traffic throughout the site and the impact on access for emergency services for example. Once the location of the key zones has been agreed further panning is required to locate on-site infrastructure installations such as electrical power, water supply, waste disposal, and lighting. 

Ground Preparation.
Once licences have been issued organisers can commence physical work on the site preparation. Using the agreed layout plan organisers will usually start by clearing the site of debris and obstacles as long as this does not impact on the local environment. The mowing of grass and vegetation clearance can be done by typical landscape machinery although organisers now give more consideration to using farm animals to trim long grass and overgrown areas. Once the site is cleared it needs to be marked out with the designated zones to enable the installation of security fencing and water and electricity supplies for example.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including a designated project management module. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Egor Kamelev via Pexels

<< Back to articles