Competition Meeting Workflow

In Planning

During the In-Planning phase the Competition Administrator must setup the meeting to implement the event structure as laid out by the Organising Committee. This will generally be based on the events listed in the notice of competition (poster).

Generally the following steps will be implemented:

• Populate from last meeting if this is a repeat of a previous competition where the event and competition structure is largely unchanged.

• Setup Meeting dates with the entries opening and closing dates/times.

• Setup Meeting details with general entry acceptance settings; contact details/terms and conditions; payment information and a few other things.

• Setup Additional information questions to collect custom information on either a per-club or per-crew basis.

• Setup Divisions if the competition uses divisions either for head racing or for regatta timetabling. Setup cross divisions settings and create the divisions themselves. And assign events to divisions - but you must create the events first!

• Setup Events either using Add Multiple Events or Add Event for single events. The former allows bulk adding for initial competition setup.

• Change event prices if entry fees have changed from previous years.

• Where necessary setup and Manage host clubs to allow clubs to indicate which host clubs have agreed to accomodate their crews.

Open for Entries

Once the competition setup is complete ensure that the setup is reviewed by both British Rowing Staff and a member of your organising committee who is familiar with your competition structure.

Use the Meeting Status screen to move the competition from In Planning to Open for Entries.

Monitoring Entries

Once open it is advisable to monitor entries periodically as they arrive. This is especially important if entries are likely to significantly exceeed entry limits prior to closing date and also to monitor that clubs are following entry guidelines. It is much easier to work with individual clubs prior to closing date than to do so in a rush after entries close - but do be mindful to not breach the rules of racing regarding disclosing entries prior to close.

Close of Entries

BROE can be configured to automatically suspend entries via the Suspend automatically option of the Meeting details screen. This is completely optional and many administrators prefer to suspend manually potentially leaving a little leaway for those leaving entries right up until the deadline.

We generally recommend that entries are put into the Suspend for New Entries state as entries close and then to fully close for entries when ready to perform the draw. Whilst this is not strictly allowed by the Rules of Racing it follows the spirit providing that the state of entries is not disclosed outside of the core entries team prior to fully closing. The benefits of only partially closing are: any crews scratched by clubs are marked as withdrawn (it seems unfair to charge crews that are not included in the draw); crews are not immediately baselined and hence entries without opposition can be tweaked to move them to appropriate events where there is opposition. As ever this has to be balanced against the need to keep entries confidential prior to marking the entries fully closed.

Crew and Event Assessment

Once the closing date has arrived the entries team need to analyse entries received:

• To ensure that crews are eligible for events they have entered. BROE will enforce basic criteria for entries but does not in general have any knowledge of local rules such as being an inexperienced crew or being a member of a particular group of clubs or institution.

• To ensure that each event has an appropriate number of crews to make proper competition. The extent to which entries are rejected or moved to other events depends on the particular competitions policies. These policies should have been approved by the Chair of Race Committee in the planning stages and where there is any doubt the chair should be consulted to ensure that changes are fair and comply with the rules of racing.

• Band events with a large number of entries. Again this should be guided by competition policy and where masters crews are involved it should follow the procedure noted on the notice of competition/poster. When banding some crews may request to be placed in a higher band than their CRI would otherwise dictate - this is at the discretion of the organising committee. It would be very unusual to place a crew in a lower band and if doing this you should certainly discuss the matter with the Chair of Race Committee to ensure that matters of fairness have been considered.

• Combine masters crews together into handicap events based on the entries received. The options for doing this are generally complex and it is best to involve the Chair of Race Committee when deciding on this. In general crews should only be grouped with a range of three handicap bands. In a head race context wider bands are acceptable if there are no other viable options.

In general at the end of this phase of accepting entries all events should have a viable number of live, competing, crews and any remaining crews in unviable events should have been marked as rejected/withdrawn. In general you are advised to not leave crews in the scratched state if they are not going to be included in the draw. This causes BROE to mark the crew as not being liable for entry fees and also simplifies later stages when checking for scratched crews.

Draw and Timetabling

BROE does not concern itself with how the draw and racing timetable are put together. All of the data about crews, events, clubs, divisions etc. can be download in CSV and spreadsheet formats from the Reports / Data Export screen. We naturally use Oar-Online ourselves but whatever method works for you is fine.

Competition Day

On competition day you should check for any scratchings that have been reported by clubs. This can be fed into race day procedures to ensure that crews do not turn up with no opposition present.

Payments and Refunds

All entry payments should have been received before entries close and in any case it is strongly recommended to require payments before the draw is published.

After the competition make sure that any refunds have been made within five days after race day. At the end of five days British Rowing closes the finance down and refunds/payments via BROE will no longer be possible.

Results

After racing completes the results need uploading into BROE. It is advisable to ensure that the race day team correctly record and check the collated results before the end of the day. Anomalies are much easier to correct when things are fresh in the mind and whilst people are still on site.

Once collated upload the results via the Results screen. The final step is to finalise the meeting to signal that results are complete and that all payments/refunds are completed. Part of the finalisation procedure is to award points.