Senior Director - Major Event Planning

Senior Director
- Major Event Planning Job Snapshot

Role:
Senior Director
- Major Event Planning

Location:

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Industry: Events Services

Function:
Event Planning-Coordination

Experience:

Approximately 25 years

Job Type: Full-time

Country:
Saudi Arabia

City:
Riyadh

Industry: Events Services

Function:
Event Planning-Coordination

Salary:  Estimated salary range based on similar jobs in the job city; please confirm the final offer with the employer.

Gender: Any

Candidate Nationality:
Any

Job Type: Full-time

The Senior Director will establish the planning architecture that enables a complex destination to host major events without compromising normal city operations, asset performance, safety, or visitor experience. The position owns the integrated planning capability from portfolio strategy and early feasibility through readiness, live operations, decommissioning, and post-event improvement. Working as the City Operations planning lead, the role will integrate operational dependencies across mobility, security, crowd management, public realm, accessibility, logistics, technology, waste, cleaning, communications, emergency response, workforce, and O&M services.

Event owners and venue operators will retain responsibility within their controlled areas, while this position ensures that citywide interfaces, responsibilities, dependencies, and readiness criteria are clearly defined and collectively understood.

• Establish the strategic framework for planning major events across the destination.
• Develop the event planning lifecycle, governance model, standards, templates, and assurance requirements.
• Translate the strategic event calendar into an integrated multi-year portfolio plan.
• Evaluate cumulative operational demand created by concurrent and sequential events.
• Identify shared resources, capacity constraints, competing priorities, and scheduling conflicts.
• Define decision rights and accountability across City Operations, event owners, venues, districts, O&M teams, and corporate functions.
• Establish appropriate planning stage gates and approval requirements.
• Create escalation routes for unresolved operational and strategic issues.
• Prepare executive decision papers addressing feasibility, priorities, risk, readiness, and resource requirements.
• Provide senior leadership with clear options and recommendations for complex event planning decisions.
• Lead integrated event planning from initial concept through post-event review.
• Define event objectives, operating assumptions, scope boundaries, and attendance profiles.
• Establish service levels and operational performance expectations.
• Develop key milestones, deliverables, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure individual functional plans form a coherent event operating model.
• Integrate mobility and transport requirements into citywide event plans.
• Coordinate security and public safety dependencies.
• Integrate crowd management strategies with venue and city operations.
• Ensure guest experience requirements are incorporated into operational planning.
• Coordinate accessibility requirements across event journeys and public areas.
• Integrate logistics, deliveries, servicing, and temporary operational movements.
• Coordinate waste collection and cleaning requirements.
• Align public realm operations with expected attendance and event activity.
• Coordinate temporary and permanent way finding requirements.
• Integrate workforce and volunteer planning with the broader operational model.
• Coordinate technology requirements supporting event operations.
• Align communications plans with operational and command structures.
• Integrate emergency response requirements across relevant stakeholders.
• Maintain an integrated master schedule for each major event.
• Establish action trackers with accountable owners and completion dates.
• Maintain dependency maps showing critical cross-functional interfaces.
• Control decision logs for major planning matters.
• Maintain an evidence repository supporting readiness and assurance decisions.
• Coordinate simultaneous events without undermining destination business continuity.
• Assess interactions between event operations and normal destination activity.
• Protect critical infrastructure and asset integrity during event periods.
• Develop citywide event operating concepts.
• Coordinate venue and destination operating models.
• Define temporary service overlays required to support event demand.
• Determine temporary infrastructure requirements with delivery stakeholders.
• Ensure operational concepts cover build and mobilisation phases.
• Coordinate testing and pre-event readiness periods.
• Define operational arrangements for live event periods.
• Plan breakdown, decommissioning, and reinstatement activities.
• Clarify boundaries between citywide services and venue-controlled operations.
• Document operational hand-offs between responsible organizations.
• Ensure service ownership is established before readiness approval.
• Challenge unnecessary temporary infrastructure requirements.
• Optimize shared…