After 5 EventsThe timeline starts with the threshold
Find out whether the event crosses your organisation's procurement threshold. That number determines whether you can confirm a supplier in a week or whether you are inside a tender process that will take two months. The threshold varies—ministries and municipalities apply different rules—but if you do not know it, your finance or procurement officer does.
If you are below the threshold, six weeks is a safe minimum. If you are above it and must tender, add another six for the procedure itself. The supplier you eventually choose still needs those same six weeks to build the event; procurement time does not replace production time, it sits in front of it.
Write the brief before you call anyone
The brief is not for the supplier. It is the document that shows, later, what was requested and why the choices made sense. It survives audit and it survives a journalist with a freedom-of-information request.
Write down: date, location, expected headcount, the programme outline, whether there is a speech and who gives it, whether alcohol is served, dietary and accessibility requirements, and the employee groups attending. If the event is bilingual, say so—it affects the host, the programme and occasionally the signage. If partners are invited, note it; the caterer prices differently and the room size changes.
Be specific about what you do not know yet. "We have not decided on entertainment" is better than silence. It tells the supplier what is still open and prevents a quote that assumes something you will not approve.
Decide the alcohol policy early
This is the question that delays more public-sector events than any other, because it sits with HR but the decision is political. Some organisations serve wine with food and stop there. Others offer a welcome drink only. Some have no alcohol at all, and frame the event around something else: an early finish, a different venue, an activity that does not default to a bar.
Settle it before the first quote. The policy affects the timeline, the staffing, the liability insurance, and whether the venue requires a separate service licence. It also affects what you tell people in the invitation, and they notice if that changes halfway through.
If there is alcohol, decide now: open bar with a cut-off time, or drink tickets, or a limited selection. An open bar at a public-sector event requires either a small group or a member of staff prepared to make a decision at eleven in the evening when someone has had enough. Tickets avoid that conversation, but they also create a visible inequality if not everyone drinks. The question has no automatic answer, but it has to be answered on paper before the event is priced.
The venue comes before the programme
You may have a venue already—a ministry hall, the organisation's own conference space, a city-owned building offered at cost. If so, everything is built around what that room allows. Ceiling height determines whether you can fly anything. Column spacing determines where the screen goes. Power determines how the catering is set up and whether the band needs a generator outside.
If you are choosing a venue, the question is usually cost and auditability, in that order. A supplier who owns the venue and provides the catering and the AV will not break the bill into pieces you can justify separately. A supplier who brings the production into a neutral venue can, and that structure is often easier to defend.
Public venues—cultural centres, event halls operated by the city—come with their own technical staff and their own rules about what you can and cannot bring in. That limits flexibility but it also limits risk, and for a one-off event with no technical experience on your side, that trade-off often makes sense.
Staff attendance is not assumed
In the private sector, a company event is presented as a benefit and attendance is encouraged. In the public sector, it is presented as optional and your job is to make sure it genuinely is. That means: accessible location, scheduled during or immediately after working hours, transport arranged or covered if the venue is outside the city, and a programme that does not assume everyone stays until the end.
Some staff will not drink. Some will not dance. Some have caring responsibilities and need to leave by seven. The event works if all of those people can attend the part that matters—the speech, the meal, the recognition—without the evening feeling like it was designed for someone else.
That affects format. A sit-down dinner with a fixed programme is easier to plan around than a four-hour reception with no clear centre. If there is entertainment, it should be possible to hear it from where people are, not from a separate room they have to choose to enter.
Two kinds of event supplier
One model: an agency takes your brief, marks it up, and sends it to the AV company they found that morning, the caterer who has a gap, and the freelancer who will host if the date is free. You get one invoice and five different conversations about what was actually agreed. When something breaks, the agency refers you to the subcontractor and the subcontractor refers you back.
Other model: the people who quote are the people who build the room, run the sound and staff the bar. They know what the venue allows because they were there last month. They know what fails because they have repaired it. The invoice is itemised because the work is itemised, and every line is something their own crew did.
The second model costs the same or less, because there is no margin on a margin. It is also the only one that makes sense when the client needs to show, in writing, what was purchased and who provided it. After 5 Events is that second kind—our crew writes the offer, builds the event, and runs it.
What to settle before you call
Date and rough headcount. Whether procurement applies. Whether alcohol is served, and under what rules. The venue, or the shortlist. Whether the event is in one language or two. Whether there is a formal programme or a speech.
You do not need to know what the room looks like or whether there should be a screen. You do not need to have chosen the menu. But you do need to know the constraints that determine whether the event can be priced, approved and delivered inside the time you have.