Most conversations with an audio visual (AV) supplier start in the wrong place. Someone sends over a kit list, someone else sends one back, and the two of you spend three weeks agreeing on equipment before anyone has said out loud what the event actually has to do. Then the get-in runs late, a presenter turns up with a laptop nobody expected, and the person you have been emailing for a month turns out not to be coming.
The questions to ask an AV supplier before you book are not really about equipment. They are about people, process and what happens on the day when something moves. Here is what we would ask, and more usefully, what a good answer sounds like.
The questions to ask an AV supplier start with the event, not the equipment list
A supplier who repeats your kit list back at you without asking what the room is for is guessing. We think specifying equipment before understanding the event produces the wrong equipment, every time. A conference where the back row is thirty metres from the stage needs something different from a launch where everyone stands. An awards night where the running order will slip needs a crew who can absorb that.
So open with the event. What has to land, who is in the room, what would count as a bad night. A supplier worth booking will start asking their own questions within about a minute. One who takes the list and goes quiet is selling you stock.
Who will actually be on site, and who employs them
This is the question most organisers skip and the one that matters most. Ask who is coming, what they will be doing, and whether they work for the supplier or for someone else.
Subcontracting is normal in this industry and it is not automatically a problem. Not knowing about it is. If the technician running your show is a freelancer booked last week, you want to know that before the day, because it changes who you can call and what they will know about your event.
There is a legal edge to this too. The Health and Safety Executive is clear that the event organiser carries prime responsibility for the health and safety of workers, the audience and contractors, and that a contractor should be able to provide evidence of a trained workforce and the competence of key staff. Asking is not being difficult. It is the organiser doing their own job.
Two things are worth seeing in writing. Evidence of competence for anything going up in the air, and confirmation the supplier carries employers’ liability insurance, which is a legal requirement as soon as a business takes on employees. A supplier who can produce both within a day is telling you something useful about how they run.
How the equipment is maintained, and why the sticker is not the answer
Everyone asks whether the kit is PAT tested. Portable appliance testing (PAT) is worth understanding properly, because the standard question does not get you what you think it does.
The Health and Safety Executive states that the regulations do not make inspection or testing of electrical appliances a legal requirement, nor do they make it a legal requirement to do it annually, and that there is no legal requirement to label equipment that has been inspected or tested. Frequency depends on the equipment and the environment it works in. Visual examination matters because some defects cannot be found by testing alone.
A sticker with last year’s date on it proves very little about a moving light that has been in and out of a van forty times since. The better question is how equipment is checked between jobs, who does it, and what happens to an item that fails. Touring equipment lives a hard life. Ask how theirs is looked after.
What happens when something fails mid-session
One of the two main reasons people come to us is that another supplier let them down. That is common enough to plan for rather than hope against, so ask the question directly. A projector lamp goes at ten past two, in front of four hundred people. What happens next.
You are listening for specifics. Is there a spare in the van or in the rack. Is there a technician in the room or one who has gone back to the office. How long does the fix take, and what does the audience see while it happens. Redundancy is a design decision made at planning stage, not a promise made on the phone.
The related question is who is in the room during the event at all. One of our published testimonials, from Louis Kirby, describes James staying on site to check everything worked and demonstrating the equipment before leaving. That is the standard to hold a supplier to: not that nothing ever goes wrong, but that somebody who can fix it is standing there when it does.
The get-in, the de-rig and what the venue will allow
The get-in is the window for bringing equipment in and rigging it. The de-rig is taking it out again. Both are usually decided by the venue rather than by your supplier, and both are where schedules break.
Ask what access the supplier needs and whether they have checked it against what the venue is offering. How wide is the load-in door, is there a lift, is there a goods entrance that closes at six, is there another event in the room the night before. Ask what time they need to start and what the rehearsal window looks like once the room is built.
If the supplier has not worked the venue, ask whether they will do a site visit. If a site visit is not practical, ask what they will get from the venue instead: rigging limits, power provision, floor plans. The answer tells you whether the schedule is a plan or an assumption.
What is included, and where one supplier beats three
Most disappointments come from scope rather than equipment. Ask what sits inside the booking and what sits outside it. Crew hours and what happens when the day overruns. Delivery, and whether it is the same team who rig. Content handling, presenter files, comms between the stage manager and the crew, backup equipment, standby power.
Our industry has a habit of being vague about what a job includes, and we do not think it should be. You should finish the conversation knowing exactly what you have booked and what you have not.
It is also worth asking how much of the event one supplier can carry. When AV, lighting and staging come from three companies, the coordination between them lands on you, usually on the morning of the get-in. We provide project management, equipment and technical support from one source for exactly that reason. If you do split it, ask each supplier who they expect to take that role, and make sure someone has said yes.
What a good supplier will ask you
Listen to their questions as closely as you judge their answers. A supplier who knows the work will ask about the furthest seat from the stage, the ceiling height, how many presenters and whether any of them are joining remotely, whether there is a band or a DJ, and what the room is doing before and after your session.
They should also be willing to tell you when they are not the right fit. We are not a consumer party hire firm, and we are not the right answer for every event. Saying so early is more useful than taking a job we cannot do properly. A supplier who says yes to absolutely everything has not understood the brief yet.
If you are specifying screens as part of this, our guide to light emitting diode (LED) screen hire for conferences covers sizing and pixel pitch, the distance between one pixel and the next. For anything going overhead, our rigging and staging pages set out what we do and how we work.
Talk to us before the next one
If you have an event coming up, or you are reviewing a supplier who did not get it right last time, we are happy to go through this list with you properly. Tell us what the event has to do and we will tell you what the room needs.
Get in touch through our contact page or email us at hire@eventproductiongroup.co.uk.
