Questions to ask, red flags to spot and what good looks like before you put a production company on your next brief.
how to choose an event AV companyMost agencies discover a supplier is the wrong fit at the worst possible time. The LED wall arrives on show morning and does not match what was quoted. The production manager you briefed is not on site. The kit list has two items substituted without a conversation.
The evaluation process that led to that supplier being on the brief was probably fine. The problem is that most agencies evaluate on price, portfolio and personality in a first meeting. None of those three things tells you whether the company will actually perform under pressure on event day. This guide covers the questions and processes that do.
Ask any AV company you are evaluating to tell you what percentage of the kit on your event they will own outright. There is nothing inherently wrong with supplementary sub-hire, but you want to know which items come from their inventory and which are sourced elsewhere on a job-by-job basis.
A company that cannot answer this question clearly has limited control over the condition and quality of what arrives on your event day. A company that owns the majority of what they quote has accountability in both directions: they chose the equipment, they maintain it, and they are responsible for what it does.
Get a name. The person who quoted your project should be able to tell you who your technical director will be on the day. If the answer is "one of our team" rather than a named individual, that is worth investigating further before you proceed.
The named technical director is the person who understands your brief from the first conversation. They are present at the site recce, the pre-production calls and the event itself. When a problem arises at 07:15 on show morning, they already know every element of the event. You call them. Not a switchboard, not a generic number.
Ask at quote stage. Confirm the name in the contract. Ask that name to attend the pre-production meeting. If this process creates friction, that is useful information.
A quote that arrives without a line-item breakdown is a quote you cannot evaluate. Aggregate prices hide the items that are most likely to change. Ask for a version that shows every element individually.
Before you pay a deposit, you should have a confirmed technical specification document. This is not the quote. It is a production document that sets out exactly what is being supplied and how it will be delivered. A complete tech spec includes:
If a company does not produce this as standard, ask for it. If they push back or say it is not something they typically provide, that tells you something meaningful about how they work under pressure.
Tell us what you are producing and we will put together a preliminary technical spec within 24 hours.
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