---
name: plan-an-event-contingency
category: start
description: Prepare proportionate decisions and recovery options for plausible event disruption. Use when weather, venue, speaker, supplier, technology, staffing, transport, or demand failures could change delivery.
---

# plan-an-event-contingency

## Procedure

1. Define critical outcomes, minimum service, risk horizon, decision authority, and unacceptable harm.
2. Inventory dependencies across venue, people, access, safety, suppliers, transport, utilities, technology, content, and finance.
3. Create plausible scenarios with onset, warning, affected groups, time-to-harm, and cascading effects.
4. Compare prevent, reduce, substitute, delay, relocate, switch format, pause, cancel, and recover options.
5. Set monitoring, trigger, decision deadline, owner, communication, cost, and evidence for each response.
6. Protect access, safeguarding, refunds, travel, data, staff welfare, and contractual obligations.
7. Rehearse compound failures and verify that resources, contacts, systems, and alternatives exist.
8. Record residual risks, acceptance, show-day checks, and post-event review.

## Guardrails

- Do not let schedule, sunk cost, sponsor pressure, or reputation override safety authority.
- Never describe an untested supplier or format as a guaranteed backup.
- Route emergency, medical, crowd, legal, insurance, and financial decisions to qualified owners.

## Done

- A contingency plan records scenarios, triggers, authority, actions, communications, and recovery evidence
- Rehearsals verify critical alternatives, resources, contacts, and decision timing
- Residual risk, acceptance, review, and live monitoring are documented