Emergency Planning

Scenario

Scenario Summary

An exercise in “Emergency Planning”

You are a recent college graduate and have been working with the most successful planning firm in Portland, Oregon for the past 12 months. You have assisted with dozens of events and are now excited to lead your first large event. It is three days until your event, the second annual Women’s Day Conference. The local medical school, Oregon Health Sciences University, is hosting the day-long conference in Portland, Oregon at the Portland Oregon Convention Center. Each attendee is paying $100 to receive a fun day of advice on women’s health, a catered box lunch, a health expo, and break-out sessions that vary from yoga to nutrition while undergoing cancer treatments. The event was well received last year and has received a lot of press. The University is excited by the press and since most of the labor and items are donated this is a large fund raiser for their operations.

Your Assignment

This morning you were notified by your assistant that the web registration did not automatically close as expected which led to 8,000 paid registrations being processed and confirmed. The capacity of the Convention Center is 7,000 given the arrangements for the trade show, theater seating, and break-out session rooms.

K E Y P L A Y E R S

Peggy Frank

Your boss at the event planning firm

This is an important client for us as we plan dozens of events for the University each year and this event is high profile in the community. Just fix it.

Jennifer Dunn

Convention & Visitor Planning Event Coordinator

We can hold up to 10,000 guests if we reconfigure the set-up. It’s a lot of work but it can be done… If the catering company can get more box lunches together. If security can find a few more people to work… If we can rent more chairs… If we can contract with another parking lot… If… There are a lot of things to change.

Bill Smith-Primary Stakeholder

OHSU Women’s Center Vice President

I’m excited about the high response. I wouldn’t worry about the capacity. We’ll have no-shows, some people come late, some people leave early. Not everyone wants a box lunch anyway. I’m thrilled we can help so many women and I hope they bring their friends with them.

Activity

You Decide…

Assignment Requirements:

1. What do you do? You have a legal, ethical, and financial responsibility to make certain the event and its operations maintain the highest standards of safety possible. You have a responsibility to protect the brand and quality of your meeting planning firm, and you have a responsibility to maximize the happiness and revenue for your client. What will you do?

2. Often the number of guests is unknown for events. Weather can keep people away or bring them out in large numbers. How do you plan for unknown guest counts? What would have been included in contingency planned for this type of event?

Responses to each question should be approximately 200- 300 words in length .

Note to the student: You are being graded on your demonstration of reasoning, critical thinking, and analytical abilities in applying what you are learning. If you use your text or outside sources of information, please provide in-text citations and references using APA or MLA formatting.

Grading Rubric:

Category	Points	Description
Understanding	15	Demonstrate a strong grasp of the problem at hand. Demonstrate understanding of how the course concepts apply to the problem.
Analysis	15	Apply original thought to solving the business problem. Apply concepts from the course material correctly toward solving the business problem.
Execution	5	Write your answer clearly and succinctly using strong organization and proper grammar. Use citations correctly.
Total	35	A quality paper will meet or exceed all of the above requirements.