Who decides what, and by when
Programme Governance
Decision rights, change control, risk registers and a reporting rhythm that keeps a programme honest between the brief and the floor.
Events fail slowly and then suddenly. The slow part is almost always governance: a decision nobody owned, a change nobody priced, a risk everybody assumed somebody else was watching.
We set the governance in the first fortnight — who decides, what needs approval, how changes are logged, what gets reported and when — and then hold it. It is unglamorous and it is the reason the last two weeks are calm.
What this covers
- Decision rights and approval thresholds
- RACI across client and agency teams
- Change control and cost impact
- Risk register and mitigation owners
- Milestone and critical path tracking
- Weekly reporting rhythm
- Supplier performance recording
- Post-event debrief and carry-forward
The standards
Rules, and why each one exists.
A rule without a reason gets dropped the first time it is inconvenient. Each of these has the failure it prevents written next to it.
Every open item has an owner and a date
An action without a name is a wish. The tracker holds both, and items without either are escalated rather than carried.
Approvals that are blocked are not shown as pending
A queue that contains things you cannot yet action is a queue people stop opening. Only genuinely actionable items are put in front of a client.
Change is logged with a cost impact
Scope creep is made explicit rather than absorbed. It is quoted, accepted with a name and a timestamp, and appears on the money view on top of the contracted figure.
The debrief includes what went wrong
A close-out with nothing wrong in it reads as marketing, and everybody senior knows it. Incidents and variance are in the report by design.
Related
Other operating disciplines.
On-Site Command
A live operating structure with named owners, agreed decision rights and a written record of what was decided on the floor.
StandardComparable quotes, visible margin, reconciled accountSourcing & Cost Control
Structured sourcing, stated commercial assumptions, approvals before commitment, and a closing account that reconciles line by line.
StandardDesigned to the room, rehearsed to the cueStage & Show Production
Room design against measured venue conditions, one controlled version of every deck, rehearsed transitions and agreed backups.
StandardOne working day · hello@voyacircle.com
Want to see this discipline applied to your event?
Send the format and the dates. We will walk you through how this one works on a programme of your shape — who holds the decision, what gets written down, and what we report back at close-out.