Auditing Your Production Workflow Before the Busy Winter Season

Tom Gregory

23 October 2026

5 min read

Why mid autumn is the right time to look at your process

Most studios and venues we talk to are in the same position at this point in the year. The summer programme has finished, the festival and outdoor work has been packed away, and the winter schedule of news bulletins, interviews, seasonal shows and live evenings has not yet started in earnest. For a few weeks the building is quieter and people have time to think about how the work is actually done.

That gap is useful, because a workflow audit needs access to people and equipment at ordinary working pace, not in the middle of a transmission. Once the schedule fills up, nobody wants a consultant watching over their shoulder or asking questions during a rehearsal. Doing the review now means any changes are settled, written down and rehearsed before the first busy week arrives.

What a workflow audit actually looks at

An audit is not an inspection of your kit. We start with how a programme moves from idea to transmission: who confirms the running order, when guests are told where to arrive, how the gallery is briefed, and what happens in the ten minutes before going live. We sit in on a rehearsal or a normal production day and note where people wait for each other, repeat questions, or rely on one person's memory.

Then we look at the paperwork that already exists, however informal. Old run sheets, patching notes taped inside a rack door, a shared message thread used for cues. Often the process works because two experienced people know it by heart. Our job is to find out which parts of it are written down and which are only in someone's head.

Pre-production: briefs, schedules and guest arrangements
Gallery and floor communication during rehearsal and transmission
Existing run sheets, cue lists and equipment notes
Handover between shifts or between regular and freelance crew

Writing run sheets that people will actually use

A run sheet earns its place only if the gallery, the floor manager and the presenter can all read it at a glance under pressure. We write them in plain language with a consistent layout: timings down the left, what the viewer sees in the middle, and what each department has to do alongside. Camera moves, graphics, audio sources and lighting states each get their own column, so nobody has to hunt through a paragraph for their cue.

We also build in the unglamorous items that are usually missing: where the fallback source is if a remote guest drops out, who decides to drop an item when timings slip, and the exact words used to call a stand-by. The aim is a document your own team can edit after we leave, not something that only makes sense to the person who wrote it.

Training your team on the kit they already have

Many production problems are not equipment faults. They come from a facility where the vision mixer has forty useful functions and everyone uses six, or where the intercom has been set up once and nobody remembers why. Training sessions are held in your own studio, on your own desk, with your own routing, so what people learn is exactly what they will press on the day.

We keep groups small and practical. A session might cover building a clean source and preview bus, recalling a lighting state without disturbing the dimmer programming, or checking a microphone chain from capsule to recorder. Each person leaves with a one-page reference for their position. We would rather a team of four confidently run six functions well than half-remember a long manual.

Hands-on sessions at your own desk, not a classroom
Short written references for each crew position
Fault-finding drills: losing a camera, a feed or a microphone

Preparing for the audit so the time is well spent

You do not need to tidy anything first. In fact it is more useful if we see the process as it genuinely runs. What helps is a short list of the programmes or events coming up over the winter, the names and roles of the people who normally crew them, and any existing documents, even if they are incomplete or out of date.

It also helps to tell us honestly where the friction is. Perhaps rehearsals overrun, guests arrive without a briefing, or one engineer is always the person called when something goes wrong. Those remarks point us to the right place far faster than a general survey. We agree the scope in writing beforehand, including which productions we will observe and how long we expect to be on site.

Keeping the changes in place through the winter

A new run sheet format that nobody revisits will drift back to the old habits within a month. So we suggest a small, regular rhythm: a short review after each programme, in which the person who called the show notes what slowed things down and the sheet is corrected while it is fresh. Ten minutes is enough if everyone attends.

We also advise keeping the documents in one agreed place, with a clear version marked on every page, and printing the current copy for the gallery rather than relying on a screen that may fail. If your team wants a follow-up visit once a few weeks of the new routine have passed, we can arrange one to check what is holding and what needs adjusting.

The quiet weeks of mid autumn are the cheapest time to find out how your production really runs. A short audit, clear run sheets and a few hours of hands-on training will not add anything new to the studio, but they make what you already own easier to use well. If you would like to talk through what a review of your own process would involve, the contact page is the place to start.