Equipment Labeling and Organisation

[charl.ie]

Hello BRers,

 

The time has come where we really need to label and organise all the equipment at my school. We have separate music and drama departments, and therefore an overlap in equipment, as well as two different cupboard to store everything in. The crew meet each Wednesday, where the older members teach the newer members, and we need to get equipment out for that. We can get anything from the drama cupboard, but the music department (quite rightly) like to know where their equipment is. What I need to do is create a system of labeling and cataloging, so we know where each bit of equipment lives (either Music or Drama) and if it is currently in or out of the cupboard. When we have a show on, I imagine we would use lists of equipment to make sure everything is put back where it's meant to go.

 

I was thinking of labeling our equipment with a 2-3 letter code for the section, e.g. LX for Lighting, SND for sound, AV for video etc., and a number to individualise the piece of equipment. Then we would have a catalog, with the code, description, and home of all the equipment, and a sign in/out sheet for when we need individual pieces of equipment. When there is a show on, I think we would ignore the sign in/out sheet and instead have a checklist to go through at the end of the show to make sure everything is in the right place, as it is unfair to put the responsibility of a piece of equipment on any one crew member in the mad rush of a show, when several different people will be using it.

 

What do you think of this system? Will it work? What's it like at your school? Do you have any other ideas? How's the best way to label equipment with basic school supplies?

[themadhippy]

KISS.

Id suggest the first letter being either D for drama or M for music,next up initials for the equipment,then a number,eg Dpar-6=drama department par can number 6, MAHMW-4 =music departments allen heath mix wizard number 4 and so on.cables can use the same scheme,so D15A20-21 is dramas 15A 20 meter cable number 21

[heinz57]

Both sound good.

 

But I perfer Charl.ie's idea. I think the other one is a little confusing.

 

At college we had no method of keeping track. So when the music people had big performances in our theatre, and they didnt hanve enough XLR's or Jack - Jacks or whatever they used to borrow ours from the lighting box. We allways used to ensure we got the XLRs back, but the Jacks quite often ended up in the music dept.

 

No worries though. Becuase we sometimes gained stuff. Usualy a 13amp or a Jack - Jack. Quite often they were ones that was owned by some careless student. We never gave them back to the music people, because they used to steal our stuff :unsure:

 

Heinz :D

[bruce]

Your school will almost certainly already have some sort of asset register which will have numbers allocated. If your lucky, this will also be the same number which is used by your PAT database.

 

Seems a bit daft to create yet another number....

 

 

This of course may not apply to small non-mains items (XLR leads etc) - but do these need anything more than a simple label saying which department it belongs to?

 

If you make it too complicated, it'll never be updated.

[paulears]

Echoing what Bruce says, it does strike me that when you all run off to do things, leaving kit out because you have to be somewhere else, it's probably up to a technician to put things away properly - so his or her views as to a system they can work should be taken into consideration - Some are great, others (hopefully not at your school) will do their utmost to wreck any system you put in place if they don't like it. Whatever you do - make it simple.

[david.elsbury]

At my old high school, there were custom made velcro cable ties on the cables. Yellow for Theatre, Orange for music. And the equipment itself (not that that moved much) was labelled with a paint pen.

 

At my church, all our tech stuff is sprayed with purple spray paint (cables just on the male end, equipment somewhere useful but discreet)

And all of my stuff (which I take to church often enough) is sprayed with orange in much the same way.

[tom_the_LD]

What about just some coloured LX tape? If it's blue it lives in the drama cupboard, if it's red it lives in the music cupboard. Then you can colour code anything you or the other guys bring in if you ever need to for a show with white tape or something.