Manage logistical activities for events

I’m managing logistics for three regional events next month. Send the ops schedule spreadsheet to Carmen in logistics and to Leo the venue contact for confirmations, in that order, with Wednesday as the deadline — but first verify vendor contact numbers, load-in hours and travel times are complete on the master sheet.

Before I send this to the venue and Carmen, make the schedule easy to act on. Put the show-day load-in and load-out windows at the top of each venue tab, highlight any vendor whose travel time exceeds two hours, and flag any slot without a confirmed truck or crew so Carmen can prioritize calls.

I just noticed the moving company’s arrival time is blank on the day-of tab; Carmen will call and Leo will assume the crew is arriving at the earliest slot. I don’t know whether the vendor failed to confirm or their time was dropped during last night’s sort. What’s the most likely reason and the safest immediate fix so we don’t miss the load-in window?

We keep losing credibility because every event morning someone discovers an unconfirmed vendor or wrong arrival time and we end up firefighting. Where in our scheduling and vendor-confirmation routine are we wasting the most time, and what one change in habit would reduce last-minute calls and missed load-ins?