Nimble Management Teams

A week after Paul Lovett's presentation, his older brother Craig also came to speak with us. He spoke more about VANOC's journey and the bigger picture of planning an Olympics, not just Cleanevent's role.

The timeline of Vancouver's preparation, as he presented it, looked something like this:

• 1960 - Vancouver started toying with the idea of hosting the Games
• 1980 - They started seriously considering making a bid
• 1990 - They started planning for the bid process
• 1999 - The bid process began; 32 cities were narrowed down to 16, then 8, then 5
• 2003 - Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics Games

This was $1 billion process, including infrastructure from roadways to the airport to the power grid to the waste system, et cetera, et cetera.

Craig then challenged us to list the "most important players", or stakeholders, in the Games. We decided there were:

• The Athletes - of course, they are the reason for the Games; they put on the show
• Management - they provide organization, safety, policy, etc
• The Sponsors - they provide the essential funding
• The Media - they are the "eyes of the world"
• The Spectators - they bring in revenue, but also provide some of the "wow factor"
• The T.V. Audience - they indirectly provide even more revenue than spectators in the stands
• The Olympic Family - this term is used not only for the relatives of athletes but for anyone involved with the governing bodies of the sport or the Games.

We also came up with a list of some of the "Functional Areas" that play roles in the planning and execution of an event like this:

• Sport - controls everything involving actual competition within the Field of Play (FOP)
• Site Management - deals with the overall venue and logistics
• Transport - responsible for getting all athletes, spectators, employees, volunteers, contractors, equipment, etc to the venue
• Overlay - designs the physical layout of the venue ("the people who get handed a box of jigsaw pieces" - Craig Lovett)
• Wayfinding - responsible for all signage to get spectators, employees, vendors, contractors, etc from their doorsteps and into the venue
• Security - monitors access to the venue and safety within it
• Broadcast/Press Media - transfers images and information from the venue to the outside world
• Look - designs and hangs the "frosting" - posters, banners, fence coverings, etc.
• Food & Beverage - catering for workers and concessions for spectators
• SCW - snow removal, cleaning, and waste removal from front- and back-of-the-house

Sounds like there's a lot going on here, eh? Craig had one main point behind all of this: all these different aspects MUST come together to become one team. They must integrate.

This idea of "integration" is a buzz word that I've been buzzing around for a while now (my Honors Thesis paper is on Integrated Rural Tourism), and it is so essential to a large event like this. Craig also called it "venuisation", turning all the individual functional areas into a venue management team in which each department has a seat at the table.

Without open lines of communication, each area is operating in a vacuum and when the event gets closer and their isolated little bubble comes in contact with another area's bubble, both are going to pop and lie in pieces on the ground. Craig explained that “the best events in the world have nimble management teams”, the ones who recognize that “at some stage you have to stop planning and start doing”.

This is especially important with the Olympics, because there is only one Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games - there is no "next time" for VANOC to get it right. They get one shot. “What’s the most important thing in the Olympic Games?" Craig asked. "Fixing it right now”.

Venue management must put themselves in the place of spectators early on, and utilize each area's expertise in a dialogue to discuss the most practical ways to plan for every potential scenario that may arise.

That is what I LOVE about event planning. There are countless challenges, all unique to venue and the event and the location and the people involved. Every action must be thought through 10, 20, 50 steps down the road to consider all possible repercussions. Each action must be run by a dozen other departments; it is such a collaboration of minds, all experts in their own fields. It's amazing what people can achieve when working together. I look forward to the day when I can be a part of such a team.

The Bid Process

Let's not forget that I also took classes in Whistler. My second class featured Paul Lovett, co-founder of Cleanevent and the man responsible for bringing us into the internship program. The focus of his lecture was on the bid process, and although he gave us a wealth of information it left me wanting to know more about bids (and how I can be involved in them).

First he explained that the IOC wants boxes upon boxes of information from the bidding city, an immense amount of work. Some of the major things they focus on these days are security, legacy, and sustainability. That being said, there isn't really a magic formula for the approach to the proposal. Sometimes it's all about building new infrastructure -- for instance, VANOC took a once dirt road in Highway 99 and went as far as blasting the mountainsides to make it wider -- yet sometimes the IOC wants a promise to not build any new structures, like Rio pledged since they already built a solid infrastructure of other games.

Sometimes it comes down largely to politics. Paul's opinion was that Chicago was too cocky and did not fight for the bid, and that Obama didn't do anything to help his hometown. One of the main things Rio had going for it was simply that South America had never hosted the Games before, as well as the fact that they threatened not to bid again if they didn't win in 2016 (they had also bid for 2012).

From there Paul moved into talking about what a contracted company such as Cleanevent goes through to win the bid from the whatever organizing committee is hosting the games (this goes for the Olympics but also things like the Commonwealth Games and other sporting events that Cleanevent works on).

First, Cleanevent goes through a process called succumbment; they succumb to the city's bid team and work for them - for free - to help put together the SCW (snow, cleaning, waste) portion of the overall bid for the Games. They sometimes even succumb to more than one city (for instance, they helped both London and New York for the 2012 Olympics). They will have a very strong "in" if they help the winning city, so assisting more than one increases their chances of coming out on the winning side.

The next thing Cleanevent does is submit an RFP - request for proposal. Numbers must be crunched, and both a technical bid (in terms of manhours and employees) and a commercial bid ($$$) are developed. Paul stressed to us the importance of never quoting hourly rates in the service industry. He also told us that if the job becomes much bigger than quoted, you should always finish the job before asking for  more money. If they’re happy with the job done, 9 out of 10 will pay more money to compensate for the extra work incurred by the company.

During this initial part of the bid, before the contract is awarded, is when many of the logistical details are planned out. What's important to remember is that at this stage "all you see is paper" - everything is based off of floor plans and diagrams and not off of an actual tour of the facilities.

Finally all applicants tour the venues and the EOI - expression of interest - process narrows down the field of bidders before going to tender. It is in the tender stage that legal consultants are brought in. Cleanevent's bid teams usually number around 15 people, mainly internal Cleanevent employees and a few from outside the company. In this critical time the bid manager must be strong enough to pull everyone together (Paul commented that in his experience a female is usually best at this role), and the marketing team must paint the story in a way that's appealing to what the organizing committee wants.

Although it is after the tender stage that a contract is awarded, Paul said that generally a tender is won even before the tender stage is reached. It's more about networking connections, and a relationship must be in place before even going to the bid table. One contract that Cleanevent is currently vying for, for example, is the Delhi Commonwealth Games. Delhi is far behind where they should be in this process, and the longer they wait the more they will be forced to go with a company like Cleanevent that has the proven industry experience. Other smaller companies don't have the luxury of simply copying and pasting bid proposals from similar events, so even though lack of planning time is frustrating to Cleanevent, it will most likely work in their advantage.

One tricky part of the contract is the issue of "field of play", and what - if any - portions of it the contracted cleaning company is required to clean. The lines are fuzzy here. In swimming competitions, for example, the pool is obviously field of play but what about the deck around the pool? It comes under the control of Sport, but they may still want the cleaning company to be responsible for it.

Paul told us about one event they worked (I cannot recall which it was, except that it was a large-scale Games) in which the contract stated that anything blue or green Cleanevent would not clean. They intended "blue" to mean water and "green" to mean grass, but the tennis courts had been painted blue and it turned out the organizing committee did want Cleanevent to take care of the courts. These types of confusions work to Cleanevent's financial advantage because they usually come to light fairly close to the Games, and by that point Cleanevent gets to charge for any changes to the initial contract.

Another change that brings in more money for Cleanevent is postponement of play. Scheduled competition days that become down days due to postponement are still charged as competition days, yet down days that become competition days also get to be charge as competition days since that type of work is being performed.

This lecture was really just a brief overview of the bid process. I can only imagine how exciting (and work intensive!) it must be to put together a bid to host the Olympics, not to mention to actually carry it to fruition. I hope one day I'll know first hand...

120,000 Hours of Work

Following our first venue tour, we had our first session of Cleanevent Academy. Those of us interns – from University of South Carolina (USC), JWU Providence, JWU Denver, and the one girl from JWU Charlotte – have been mixed up into three groups which will each have 5 days of class. In addition to the venue tours and lectures from Scott Williams, we will have at least one guest speaker per session from Cleanevent. Our special guests from VANOC and IOC have not been finalized yet.

Today Craig Madigan, Cleanevent’s Project Manager for all 7 mountain venues, came and spent about an hour with us.

One thing we talked with Scott about before Craig arrived was the reading assignment for the day, about In-House versus Contract services. Craig explained that VANOC looked two separate modules for contracting cleaning services – one for the city of Vancouver, and the other for the mountain venues of Whistler. When looking at it from this perspective, the main difference is that just about every mountain venue had to be built, and most are temporary, whereas the city venues were previously established with existing staff.

Stemming from the consideration of staff, which –  let’s face it – is huge in the event industry, Vancouver also had a larger pool of workers that made it easier to simply bolster the venues’ existing cleaning crews. The local population in Whistler, however, was drastically different. Whistler locals’ lifestyle was simply not reliable enough to be compatible with Cleanevent’s needs. This is a wealthy area driven by the ski slopes, so the kids here aged 18-25 don’t need to work and would rather skiing or snowboarding all day.

Based on those considerations, it made sense for VANOC to contract out almost everything in the mountain venues, essentially buying a solution to the complications presented here.

We also talked about resident perception of the Games. In Whistler, for instance, most of the locals wanted a way out because of concerns over things like safety and traffic. They also had the option to rent out their businesses to VANOC, rent out their residences to spectators, and take off on a month’s paid vacation. Scott admitted that hosting the Olympics is financially an endeavor that just doesn’t work, but if the community is willing to do it they can have a lot of fun.

Our next topic of discussion was some of the function teams involved in putting on the Olympics. Staying with Cleanevent right now is a Russian guy named Maxim who is representing the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. He is on what’s called the Overlay Team, whose responsibility is to design all the Olympic buildings in CAD and then supervise the custom-building of all the venues and support buildings. The Overlay Team owns and controls the venues for about three years before the event, and in a short period of time before the Games they turn it over to the Operations. During his time at these Games, Maxim is looking at all the short-comings of the planning to see how Sochi can avoid the same mistakes.

There is also something called the “Look” department. These people are in charge of dressing everything in banners and flags and drapes on the scaffolding. They also worked out all the ultra-specific colors chemes and uniforms and other visual marketing. Scott kept referring to all this as the “frosting”.

The last group we talked about were the Wayfinders. This crew is in charge of all Olympic signage/directions/arrows to direct the spectators with all the knowledge they need to get to and around within the venues. They must do the majority of their work from Overlay’s CAD design, and then only have a couple weeks to make last-minute adjustments, sizing, extra considerations.

In the last 2-3 weeks leading up to the Games, a lot of the planning must be adjusted as unforeseeable circumstances rear their ugly heads. For example, when Look designs and sizes their grandstand drapes, they plan for a certain height of snow – which just isn't here in Whistler. The Wayfinding team also has to make adjustments as people begin to come to the venues and report oversights in the signage.

 This is a good example of a calculation that the Look department made when creating the signage - they were counting on a few inches of snow to cover the bottom of the fencing.

A lot of things have to happen really fast around here. On our initial tour Joey was pointing out entire buildings that were not there just a few days before. The Media Center, which overtook the Whistler Conference Center, was not even made available to VANOC until January 3rd. Craig was telling us that 12 months of planning for an event like this is ideal, but he didn't get here until May of last year.

The last thing Craig talked about was working for Cleanevent as a whole, including the other large events they work for. They are currently bidding for the contract for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi; they submitted the bid around 212 days before the game,  but they would have liked to have had that done 300 days before that! The Commonwealth Games are one of the biggest event for Cleanevent, managing 50 venues and requiring 1 million manhours of work. The Summer Olympics require 1.7 million, the Winter Olympics need 120,000, and the Asian Games take 650,000 manhours to clean the venues throughout the entire period. It's quite difficult to imagine, wouldn't you agree!?