After 5 EventsTwelve weeks is comfortable; six is tight
The activity books first because it sets the date, but do not let it set everything else. The vendor will ask where the group should arrive and when you need them back; you need those answers before you sign. That means knowing the venue, the transport and whether the evening is a seated dinner or something else.
Venues that can take a group midweek at short notice are usually available for a reason. If the executive has mentioned the event to clients or to the board, the venue is load-bearing.
The venue carries more than the activity provider will tell you
Most activities happen off-site — a forest, a manor, a karting track — so the venue is where the day starts and where it ends. It needs parking or a place for a bus to wait, space to leave bags and coats, and a room that works for the brief at the end of the day.
The activity company will say they need nothing from the venue. That is true for them. It is not true for you, because they arrive after your group does and they leave before dinner. The venue has to hold breakfast, hold the group if transport is delayed, and turn into the evening without the executive seeing the change happen.
Book the venue on the assumption the activity could be canceled and the day would still run.
Transport is a decision, not a service
If the group fits in their own cars and the venue has parking, the decision is made. If not, you are choosing between a bus that runs to a schedule and people finding their own way to a place they have not been before.
A bus makes the executive visible for the journey both ways. That can matter — the speech starts on the bus, the conversation with the visitor happens there — or it can be time the executive does not want structured. Ask.
If people drive themselves, send the location as a map link and a written address, and add fifteen minutes to the start time because someone will be late.
The evening is a different event and needs a different brief
The activity ends mid-afternoon. The group is tired, some people are cold, several need to change. The evening that follows is weight-bearing — it is the part remembered and the part where the executive speaks — but it is usually planned as though it will take care of itself.
It will not. Decide the format now: seated dinner, standing reception, or the group released to go home. If the executive is giving a speech or a toast, the room needs a microphone that works and a place to stand that everyone can see from. If the office is visiting from abroad or the board is attending, the evening has formal weight and the run-sheet reflects that.
The common error is to add the evening as a line on the activity invoice. The activity vendor will broker it, and what arrives is a room and a menu arranged by someone who has never seen your group and will not be there when the microphone cuts out.
The run-sheet is written for the executive, not for you
The executive will not read the full brief. They will glance at a page the morning of or in the car on the way, so the run-sheet has to communicate in thirty seconds: where they need to be when, when they are speaking, when the group is released.
One page, times on the left, bold for anything the executive does personally. Add a second page with the vendor contact numbers and the venue address as a map link. The executive will not call the vendors, but they will hand the page to you when something is late and expect you to.
What breaks: transport, timing, and the microphone
Transport breaks when people are driving themselves and the location is unfamiliar. Send the address and the map link twice, and add the venue phone number in case someone is lost. If the start time is early, say the evening before that the group should expect an early start, because the two-sentence CEO brief may not have included one.
Timing breaks when the activity runs long and pushes into dinner service. The caterer needs the room at a fixed time; the activity vendor has no stake in that. Build fifteen minutes of gap.
The microphone breaks when the venue assumes you do not need it or when the system is built into a ceiling and no one tested it that morning. If the executive is speaking, write into the run-sheet that you will test the microphone one hour before. If the venue does not have one, rent it as a separate line.
Two kinds of supplier
One kind of company plans the event and parcels the work outward: the AV to a subcontractor they met once, the catering to whoever the venue uses, the staff to an agency hired that morning. They earn on every line and carry no liability for how the lines connect, because none of the people on-site report to them.
The other kind quotes, builds and staffs the evening with people who have worked the same room together before. The person who answers the phone is the person running sound, and if the microphone fails they are the one carrying the spare.
You will not know which you are dealing with until you ask who is on-site and whether they work for the company taking the booking. The answer to that is the answer to whether anyone will fix it when it breaks.
What to settle before calling anyone
The executive needs to decide three things, and everything else follows from them: whether the evening is formal or not, whether the group travels together, and whether the executive is speaking. Get those in writing — an email reply is enough — because approvals given verbally disappear when the invoice arrives.
Once you have those, the sequence is: venue, transport, caterer, then activity. The activity can move by a week; the venue that holds the evening cannot.
The team writing this works as After 5 Events — the same people who quote the evening run it on the day. Decide the room and the format first. The rest is negotiable.