The devastating bushfire on the Surf Coast of Victoria on Christmas Day 2015 impacted so many people in so many different ways, fortunately without loss of life. One such impact was on the organisers of the annual Falls Music and Arts Festival, normally staged at a permanent site at Erskine Falls, deep in the bush north of Lorne.
Through discussions with the relevant authorities, it was agreed that the risk to the patrons, staff and performers would be too great to continue to stage the event in its normal location. In view of this, the organisers were faced with two alternatives: cancel or relocate.
Taking everything into account, the decision was made to relocate. The Erskine Falls venue has a permanent infrastructure for the festival that includes the main stage, composting toilets, event management buildings and camping grounds for the youngsters who attend the four-day event.
All of these facilities had to be replicated and all of the many stakeholders had to be notified of the change. So why does this represent extreme project management?
FM Scope’s Martin Leitch
Decision time
After considering a number of alternative venues, the decision to relocate was made at 1700 hours on Saturday 26 December. With the event scheduled to start at midday on Monday 28 December, this meant that the organisers had less than 48 hours to implement the relocation.
Key activities in the set-up of the event at Mount Duneed Winery, to the west of Geelong, included:
- sourcing and hiring the main stage and relocating sound and visual equipment
- sourcing and hiring in excess of 100 portable toilets, shade tents and marquees
- sourcing and hiring in excess of five kilometres of fencing to protect the vines and olive trees and to secure the festival site from illegal entry, and
- setting up a fully equipped medical facility.
Although there was a minor delay of a couple of hours, everything was in place to allow the event to start as planned. Apart from staff and volunteers working round the clock, three other key factors were fundamental to this achievement.
Project management success is normally evaluated on the three factors of time, cost and quality. The relocation of the festival was no exception: there was a limited time period in which to complete the relocation; although escalated, costs had to be contained as much as possible, and the quality had to be to the standards of previous years.
However, these success factors would not have been achieved were it not for all concerned having a common goal, communicating effectively and having total commitment to the task in hand. In this regard there are lessons to be learned for everyone responsible for delivering successful projects, especially facilities management professionals.
A single common goal
Had the decision been made to cancel the event, many different stakeholders would have been impacted.
First and foremost were the 16,500 festival-goers that annually attend the Falls Festival – for many of them the event is a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. Then there would have been the loss of income for the vendors and performers and, of course, significant disappointment for the organisers and volunteers, many of who spend a full year planning and preparing for the event.
It would seem fairly obvious that the stakeholders involved in a project would know and understand its primary objective, but this is not always the case. Even for small projects it is essential to prepare a project charter that clearly and unambiguously defines the project’s objective. It is equally essential that this be shared among project stakeholders to ensure that they all work towards the common goal.
Clear communication
Inaccurate or inadequate communication is very wasteful of resources, potentially resulting in work having to be redone and tasks being carried out incorrectly. Whether working under tight time pressures or not, effective communication is essential.
In the case of the festival, the quality of the communication among all the stakeholders was paramount – any failure in instructions would have resulted in the loss of precious time and jeopardised the start of the event. The new venue also brought other new challenges, such as neighbours and the potential for noise complaints, a factor that is not an issue in the middle of the bush. Expectations and issues had to be handled very sensitively through effective communication.
[quote style=’1′ cite=”]Project management success is normally evaluated on the three factors of time, cost and quality. The relocation of the festival was no exception: there was a limited time period in which to complete the relocation; although escalated, costs had to be contained as much as possible, and the quality had to be to the standards of previous years.[/quote]
This highlights the need for a carefully crafted communications plan that identifies all possible stakeholders, their role in the project, how they are impacted by the project and the most appropriate methods of communicating. With today’s technology it is easy to rely on electronic methods of communication, but a project’s success, or failure, can be a direct result of the quality of traditional verbal communication between stakeholders.
It also underlines the need to treat each project on a case-by-case basis – using a ‘template’ approach to preparing a communications plan usually results in errors and omissions that can create the need for additional resources as the project progresses. This can result in cost and time overruns.
Commitment
The commitment of every single stakeholder to make the event happen was demonstrated by round-the-clock working, with many paid and unpaid workers getting only a few hours of sleep, if any, during that 48-hour period. This level of commitment is not financially driven – it is all about getting the job done, no matter what.
For the core of the festival team, the event is their reason for being there, so of course, they will go the extra distance. But this is not necessarily the case in FM type projects. It is necessary to commit energy and resources to building the project team at the start of and throughout the project. Due to the importance of the role in this regard, the selection criteria for the project team leader must include key factors around people management and team building skills.
Having a common goal and being part of an effective communications structure helps by considerably increasing the commitment of team members to the extent that they are more likely to go the extra distance without necessarily expecting additional financial reward.
Maximising project success
Getting each of these factors right can also be helped by having some consistency of team membership from project to project – this capitalises on the fact that people work better as their relationships with colleagues improve.
Unfortunately, achieving this level of consistency in facilities and property-related projects is not always possible due to procurement rules and because of the lack of continuity between projects.
Successfully managed projects are usually judged by the three factors of time, cost and quality, but without defining the project’s common goal, establishing an effective communication strategy and engendering total commitment of all stakeholders, there is a high chance that project objectives will not be met.
All facilities management projects, and in particular those that feature very tight time and cost constraints, must have these three fundamentals in place to maximise the chance of success.
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The author, Martin Leitch, is a workplace management consultant at FM Scope with in excess of 30 years’ experience in delivering a wide range of facilities management consultancy and education services in the UK and Australia. This article also appears in the April/May edition of Facility Management.
