Case study
2,400 delegates, four halls, one control room
A national pharmaceutical association moved its annual congress onto a single access-controlled campus. We sized the counter bank from the previous year's arrival curve and cut check-in to nine seconds a delegate.
The challenge
What was actually wrong
The previous year had produced a 70-minute queue that pushed the opening keynote back by half an hour. Compliance rules also meant delegate movement between therapeutic-area halls had to be auditable, which the old badge-and-clipboard system could not evidence.
Approach
How we sized it
We pulled two years of registration timestamps and modelled the arrival curve. It showed 61% of delegates arriving inside a 90-minute window — far tighter than the flat assumption the previous counter plan had used. That single figure set the counter count at six rather than four, and moved badge printing to pre-printed stock collected by surname block.
Deployment
What went on the floor
Six counters plus two exception desks, RFID portals on all four hall doors, and a control room with a live occupancy board. Our own segmented network carried registration and access control; the venue uplink was treated as an uplink, not as infrastructure. Full dry run against the real network the evening before.
Results
What we measured
Per delegate at counter
To clear 2,400 arrivals
Access incidents
More work
Other deployments
Let's build the room
Send us the date, the city and the headcount. We come back with sizing, staffing and a costed range.