Recurring calendars and multi-event programmes
How to allocate people across an event portfolio
Three events are in planning at once, and the same two people are named as owner on all of them.
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The short answer
List each person by role, give every event a weekly workload for that role, and add the weeks up. Anyone above their real availability in any week is over-allocated, whatever the event plan says.
Allocation follows the order set in event calendar prioritisation. The event recurring calendar capacity planner shows the same sums as a calendar view.
Count roles, not names
Allocate by role first: programme owner, finance approver, speaker liaison, registration lead, on-site lead. A role can then be matched to a person, a deputy or an outside lead without redrawing the whole plan.
Write each person's real availability per week. Subtract leave, their day job, committee meetings and the weeks after other events when they are catching up.
Separate shared work from event work
| Type of work | Examples | How to allocate |
|---|---|---|
| Shared across events | Supplier database, member communications calendar, finance reporting, website updates. | Allocate once to the portfolio, not once per event. Counting it three times hides real capacity. |
| Event-specific | Programme building, venue walk-through, speaker confirmations, registration set-up. | Allocate to the event by week, peaking before announcement and in the final month. |
| Recurring tail | Post-event report, survey analysis, supplier payments, thank-you messages. | Allocate to the weeks after the event. This is the work most often forgotten. |
Steps to a workable allocation
- Write the weekly workload per role for each event, in days, using last year's effort as a starting point if you have it.
- Add the events together per person per week and compare with availability.
- Flag every week where a person is above availability, and note which events cause it.
- Choose a remedy for each flag: move an event, hand a task to a deputy, narrow scope, or bring in extra capacity for those weeks.
- Record the decision and the person who made it, then re-run the sums when a date moves.
Where allocations go wrong
- Two full-time commitments assigned to one person. A lead who is full-time on an October conference cannot also be full-time on a roadshow in the same weeks, however the cells are coloured.
- Treating availability as 100 percent. Meetings, handovers and reactive messages use part of every week.
- Naming the same deputy for every event, so the backup is the first person to run out of time.
- Allocating at event level only. The overload sits in particular weeks, and an annual total will not show it.
Worked example · Fictional example
Two people, three events
Fictional organisation and figures, in working days, for illustration only.
Persatuan Fiktif Juruaudit Dalaman has a programme manager with 4 working days a week for events, after her day job and committee work. In the week of 14 September the annual forum needs 3 days, the member roadshow needs 2 days and the audit-skills seminar needs 1 day.
That is 6 days against 4 available. The secretariat moves seminar speaker confirmations to the week before, hands roadshow venue emails to a deputy for that week, and records that the forum keeps priority because it is Tier A.
| Week | Forum | Roadshow | Seminar | Total days | Available | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Sep | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | At limit |
| 14 Sep | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 4 | Over by 2 |
| 21 Sep | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 4 | At limit |
| 28 Sep | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | Spare 1 |
Use this yourself
Portfolio allocation worksheet
One row per role per week. Fill the first three columns for each event, then total.
| Role and person | Week | Event A days | Event B days | Event C days | Shared work days | Available days | Over or spare | Remedy and decision owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Programme owner: | ||||||||
| Finance approver: | ||||||||
| Registration lead: | ||||||||
| On-site lead: |
Handle it in-house, or bring in help?
Your team can usually handle this when
- Two or three events, with owners who can state their weekly workload honestly.
- Each role has a named deputy who is not also named on other events.
- Peaks are short and can be solved by moving a task.
Outside planning help earns its fee when
- The same people carry every event and nobody can say how many days they have.
- Peaks overlap for several weeks and the sums stay red after moving tasks.
- A second full-time commitment is arriving, such as a roadshow, and no one has capacity for it.
Need dedicated capacity for the peak weeks?
If the worksheet shows weeks that cannot be covered inside your team, a recurring programme manager can take the coordination of agreed events in those weeks, keep the allocation sheet current and raise clashes before they bite. The approval, budget and programme decisions stay with your committee. Where a single full-time commitment is needed on site, an embedded event project manager works to hours and scope agreed in advance.
Questions organisers ask
How many days a week does one person really have for events?
Ask them, and subtract meetings, their main job and leave. Many people overstate it at the start of a project. Compare a week from last year's event with the number they give.
Should shared tasks be split across events?
Allocate them once at portfolio level, then give each event a share only if it truly needs extra. Splitting them evenly makes every event look more expensive and the total less visible.
Can one project lead cover two events at the same time?
Only if the weeks of heavy work do not overlap. Two full-time commitments in the same weeks cannot be covered by one lead, and a plan that shows them as covered should be reopened.
What if the sums show nobody is over-allocated?
Check that availability was entered after leave and day-job time. Then test one bad week, such as a speaker withdrawal, to see whether the plan has any slack left.
Related resources
Content record: Draft. Written from the cited sources and checked by automated rules; not yet independently reviewed.