OnePlan is built for our event map and venue planning users. Your feedback and ideas shape the product, be it for speed, accuracy, risk reduction, return on investment or any other improvement to your planning process. This blog series explores the OnePlan benefits our users experience in planning their events and venues.
In this second article of the three-part series “in our users’ words”, see how sports events including the UK’s prestigious Boat Race and Great North Run, festivals, local government and other organisations such as the LA Wildlife Education & Rehab Center benefit by using OnePlan. You can read Part 1 and Part 3 here.
7: PRECISE INFORMATION
“OnePlan is invaluable because it shows you precisely what’s needed”
The collaborative nature of OnePlan is especially great for suppliers knowing where infrastructure needs to be positioned during the event set-up phase. Objects can be placed with centimetre accuracy, and can easily be viewed on mobile or tablet when the item is actually being placed on the ground.
Nigel Gough, Operations Director & Great North Run Race Director at the Great Run Company, says: “OnePlan is particularly useful in designing and plotting all the key infrastructure which can then be shared with suppliers and key stakeholders prior to and during event delivery.”
ExCeL London is the city’s largest conference centre, and its Executive Director James Rees finds the optimisation of elements a great benefit: “Through OnePlan, organisers can not only plan better but optimise elements such as entrance and exit flows and placements for signage and sponsorship activations.”
For Phil Morgan at Taunton Pride, the benefit of accurate infrastructure placement goes right down to the type of fencing they require and the number of items to be ordered: “Being able to draw in things like the Heras fencing in OnePlan has been invaluable because clearly it’s being drawn to scale and shows you precisely how many panels would be needed.”
Working collaboratively with suppliers contributes to the substantial time that event organizers are saving by using OnePlan. Alex Lock, Events Manager at Guernsey Together Festival, says: “Building our perimeter fence usually takes 3 days, but after using OnePlan the team had it up in a day.”
And the knock-on benefit of this? A slicker set-up for the operational team each time an event is staged. Toby Russell, Events Manager at Banbury Council, adds: “I love that there are thousands of different items to add onto an event site, and my favourite tool is definitely the crowd barrier one – getting the right number of barriers to different parts of the site has also made me very popular with our operational team too!”
See Toby’s event plan above, that includes a large fireworks fall-out area.
8: SHARING WITH STAKEHOLDERS
“It’s now easy to show people the site, especially when I’m presenting to the Safety Advisory Group”
The right infrastructure planning is an important component of an event’s overall safety plan. Many of our users appreciate how OnePlan improves their collaboration with safety advisory groups.
Joe Buirski, Events Manager at Fire in the Mountain, says: “OnePlan has really helped with our SAG meeting providing information for the authorities.”
A key reason for this is that the platform combines the visual map with pinpoint data in one single source of truth. Mike Matranga, CEO at M6 Global Defense Group, says: “OnePlan allows the end user to take multiple components of Emergency Planning and compile them into a functional visual aide, to not only see their project in full scale but obtain a complete itemized list of necessary equipment with their AI based software which uses distances and time to scale.”
It means reliable information that can be shared with partners, as Simon Stewart, organizer of the Cheese & Chilli Festival, confirms: “OnePlan gives us reliable safety and planning information that supports our planning, operations and stakeholders.”
This is particularly important for events held in high-profile city locations and broadcast to millions of people on TV. The Boat Race in the UK, held on the River Thames in central London, is a good example. Its Event Manager, Chris Price, says: “OnePlan makes it easy for me to show people the site, especially when I am presenting to the Safety Advisory Group and multi-agency meetings.”
For sports events like this, the right safety planning is important for fans too. David Markham, Venue Operations Director at World Triathlon, says: “Safety protocols are a huge part of planning events. OnePlan is really helpful that way. Outlining an area and knowing how many people can safely be in that area.”
The collaborative security benefit, sharing plans with Safety Advisory Groups, is summarised nicely by Steve Bishop at the Masters of Motoring event: “Giving our event plan information to the ESAG and the venue just makes everyone more confident in the planning and execution of a successful event.”
9: REDUCED RISK
“It’s the ideal solution to help us meet our important logistical challenges with professionalism and flexibility”
A thorough, simple to understand event plan has a powerful benefit that every event organizer will appreciate: it reduces risk.
Benoît Ruchet, Operations Director at the Fête Fédérale de Gymnastique Lausanne 2025, says: ”The FFG25 is a complex multi-day, multi-sport and multi-venue event to plan, with over 100 competitions organised in 30 venues over 10 days. Plus we have a large organisation team with over 400 staff and numerous external suppliers and stakeholders throughout Switzerland. OnePlan is the ideal solution to help us meet these important logistical challenges with professionalism and flexibility.”
This is true for events of all sizes, as Kristen Hudgens at TRC Events, mentions: “OnePlan means I can now plan my Christmas event precisely. It’s super accurate which gives me confidence when I get on site.”
Our mapping platform enables planners to scenario plan from the comfort of their desk, in collaboration with partners, and to experiment with layouts. Katy Welch, who organizes the Historic Hannibal Marketing Council (Twain on Main), says: “With OnePlan I was able to play around with our booth placement to see if we could do 2 booths back to back then a gap, rather than in years past doing booth, gap, booth, gap. By experimenting with this layout we were able to fit 7 booths to every 5 we placed in years past, which will help make our event more profitable this year!”
Skip Harris, Director at the LA Wildlife Education & Rehab Center, also finds a reduced risk thanks to OnePlan: “I initially tried to build out a site plan on my own but I soon discovered how difficult this can be. However, once I found OnePlan I discovered a helping hand and the guidance I needed to quickly prepare a detailed site plan with hospital and admin structures, outdoor enclosures for wildlife rehabilitation, fencing, public access points and so on.”
10: WORLD-CLASS VENUE PLANNING
“OnePlan allows us to provide a new level of world class service that we pride ourselves on”
The examples above show a real range of venue types that benefit from using OnePlan. An ever increasing number of permanent venues now use OnePlan to plan all their events year-round.
In Los Angeles, the Crypto.com Arena hosts over 230 events per year, and is able to optimize its multiple teams for each event via OnePlan. Its President Lee Zeidman says: “Utilizing OnePlan from production to guest services and security, to booking and marketing and operations, allows us to be more efficient and provide our tenants, promoters and future events with a new level of world class service that we pride ourselves on.”
“We’re able to rapidly customize the arena for every event we host,” adds Lee.
It’s a similar benefit for Silverstone, one of the UK’s largest sports venues, which uses OnePlan for its 50+ events per year, including the Formula 1 British Grand Prix with 500,000 fans at the venue. Its Senior Events Manager James Loveridge says: “Using OnePlan has significantly improved delivering the process of our events. The way we share information with our contractors has improved significantly with OnePlan.”
11: CAD & FLOOR PLAN FILE INTEGRATION
“Using OnePlan takes CAD updates out of the mix”
All major venues have existing CAD, architectural or floor plan files, most of which are difficult for many team members to use productively. And typically CAD updates, however small or large, comes at a cost with them having to be made by external designers. OnePlan solves this by the easy ability to upload your CAD file with centimetre accuracy, making it accessible to anyone in your team using OnePlan.
The Tour of Britain saves $12,000 per year by no longer needing CAD specialists for planning its annual, multi-stage events. Finish Director Rob Kennison says: “I used to have to speak to each authority for each venue’s DWG file of their local mapping. Then I’d get our CAD person to make a map based on my sketches which involved too much back and forth. It was time consuming and expensive. Not ideal.”
Silverstone have a similar story, as Senior Events Manager Jacalyn Morgan adds: “Our previous event planning methods required extensive training to use AutoCAD and the CAD plan was only as up-to-date as the last PDF pulled from it.” Likewise, Event Coordinator at Midwood Entertainment, Elyce Turner says: “SO much simplier than having to deal with CAD all the time. CAD is great for indoors, but no longer necessary for outdoor event sites. I’m a big fan of this program”
Importing your CAD files into OnePlan makes planning more efficient and saves our customers time and money. Sam Wilson, National Operations Manager at Stadium, says: “If we compare it to CAD, OnePlan works much better for our needs. In CAD, you had to do quite a lot of work to get a cone line, whereas in OnePlan it’s quite literally click and point and it gives you the number of cones needed.”
Sam continues: “It would take me a day to do eight maps in CAD. In OnePlan it’s just two hours, meaning I have more time to make changes.”
And the benefit is felt at one of the USA’s biggest venues, the Crypto.com Arena. Lee Zeidman says: “Using OnePlan takes CAD updates out of the mix, because we’re now able to make updates ahead of time.”
Click here to read Part 1 and Part 3 of this blog series “in our users’ words”.
And if you’d like to see OnePlan in action, Book a Demo to chat with one of our friendly team.
