Earlier, we posted an article, How Many Porters Do I Need for My Event? where we stated that while we generally suggest one cleaner for every 250 people (except one might want two cleaners for the first 250 and sometimes three for up to 500), however, as your event scales in size, that 1:250 person ratio expands, unless your scope of work does as well.
Staffing in general depends upon the following parameters:
- the scope of work
- whether or not there will food and drink
- if the event is indoor or outdoor,
- how many guests are attending and at what intervals (in other words, will you have x number of people throughout the day or x number of people all at once?)
- and how large is the venue?
If it’s a large event, such as an outdoor festival, having a dedicated restroom staff, dedicated waste management team stationed at the dumpsters and moving bags back and forth, a dedicated groundskeeping team, and a supervisor to oversee them is your best use of resources.
If you have dedicated restroom staff for port-a-potty maintenance, we recommend one cleaner per ten (10) potties, assuming the restrooms are gender neutral. For separate female and male restrooms, ideally staff one cleaner of the appropriate sex for each restroom for a large venue. For a smaller venue such as a nightclub or indoor event space with stand alone restrooms where the attendant can roam, you may only need one cleaner depending on the size and number of guests. However at outdoor events with thousands of attendees where there tend to be portapotties, trailers, or standalone park or city facilities, the one cleaner per 10-15 stalls is a dependable rule of thumb.
Staffing for smaller large-scale events can change depending on the client needs and scope of work. For instance, for an event of 2000, we usually recommend two leads and six crew members for a total of eight working cleaners. However, here are three different events of an expected 2000 guests where staffing numbers were radically different:
- Family Festival at Camp Pendleton—for this event, which boasted food trucks, arts and crafts booths, petting zoos, rides, games, and carnival-like activities over a 160,000 square foot space (about three football fields), we supplied our recommended eight (8) cleaners. All eight attended to trash management, restroom cleaning, restocking, and maintenance, and wiping down picnic tables and groundskeeping. Eight cleaners for this was the perfect staffing equation.
- Nurses Convention at the Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco—In this 5000 square foot garden, 2300 nurses gathered for an evening of jazz and jubilee. There were several bars, a sundae area, picnic tables for food, a jazz concert area, and various areas with standing tables to mingle and have desserts and drinks. Because San Francisco has strict ordinances on composting and recycling, the event producer wanted staff to stand at each trio of bins and make sure guests put trash, compost, and recycling in their respectively proper bins. We also had cleaners stationed at the dumpsters to make sure the right bags went into the right dumpsters. We had groundskeepers, dedicated restroom staff, and staff who wiped down tables and bussed disposable cups and plates. For this event, we supplied 54 crew members and assigned them to specific tasks and duties and that was the right amount.
- Renegade Craft Fair — Renegade comes to Los Angeles twice a year, once to the Los Angeles Historic State Park near Downtown Los Angeles and the other to the Santa Monica Airport. About 2000 guests trickle through the fair each weekend day. Because Santa Monica, like San Francisco, has stringent waste sorting requirements, we supply five (5) crew members for Santa Monica, two (2) dedicated to waste sorting and three (3) dedicated to groundskeeping. For the Los Angeles Historic State Park location, we only staff three (3) cleaners to do groundskeeping, emptying and relining trash cans and taking them to dumpsters.
Each of these events hosted about 2000 guests, however, they had different scopes of work, with different event geometry and a wide variety of staffing requirements. This is why pre-production meetings are really important so that details and needs can be ironed out in advance.
Also, whether or not you are staffing for live event cleaning versus post event cleanup makes a difference. For the same outdoor event which hosted 2000 guests, our general recommendation would be eight (8) cleaners for live event cleaning versus four cleaners for post-event cleanup, assuming our minimum of four hours for the post-event shift.
As your event scales, if the venue allows, tools like trash carts and golf carts can help reduce labor needs and costs. One trash cart can handle 500-1000 lbs of trash, or the equivalent of 8-12 bags, depending on size. If your dumpster is tucked away from the main arena where people congregate and throw away trash, then transferring trash bags to the dumpster will be a much longer and more drawn out process if each cleaner has to carry the trash bags by hand. However, if the venue space is packed with crowds and there is no pathway for any kind of cart, then having those tools accomplishes nothing.
If an outdoor event venue has been divided by your production build into separate areas then you may want dedicated cleaning staff for those areas. For instance, we provided pre, live and post event services for a champagne polo party at the Will Rogers State Park before it was scourged by the Palisades fires. There was a VIP area, a garden party area, a sundeck area, a general admission lawn, a food truck area, back of house, dumpsters, and several parking lots. On the days leading up to the event, we provided three cleaners then fourteen the day before. The day of the event, two shifts of sixty-five cleaners covered all the essential areas. Post-event crews ranged from four to twelve cleaners. Four thousand guests attended this event, but the production build and level of garbage (especially from the champagne bottles which all needed to be recycled) warranted a large crew.
WeHo Pride usually gets an expected outcome of about 50,000 people a day and usually requests about 30-35 cleaners for their bigger Saturday night concert and festival. PopUP CleanUP for a soap box racing event at the Utah Capitol that drew a crowd size of somewhere between 40-50,000. The client asked for us to provide thirteen (13) cleaners but we really needed closer to 16-20. It was challenging to keep up with the garbage production and the distance to the dumpsters made the trips to empty all the trash longer and more arduous.
While the 1:250 cleaner ratio works for smaller parties up to about 3000 guests, at 5000 guests, you usually need about 10-12 cleaners, from there you can go up at least 1-2 cleaners for every 2500-5000 guests depending on, again, all the factors listed above.
If you need staff, trash management, and landfill diversion strategies for a large scale outdoor event, consider hiring PopUP CleanUP to do your dirty work for you!
