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FM for stadium management

With the Tokyo Games underway, Olympic fever has truly taken hold. 42 stadiums across Japan are staging 33 different sports, and although COVID has forced spectators to stay at home, there is still an incredible amount of work that goes into maintaining these spaces. Changing pandemic restrictions have seen stadiums lie dormant for many months, but now capacity is increasing in some countries for sporting and music events – with Ed Sheeran recently hitting the news by naming Melbourne Cricket Ground as his dream venue. Stadiums come with their own set of challenges for FM teams, often requiring CAFM software to help manage the planning and delivery of hard and soft services.

One of the main challenges is managing the contrasting workload between the hundreds of event days held throughout the year and non-event days. For example, on an event day at Melbourne Cricket Ground, 50 to 100 work requests could be issued from over 200 internal and external staff, compared to around 20 when no events are scheduled. The team uses QFM CAFM software to manage all requests from breakages to cleaning, on PCs as well as mobile phones so work can be allocated to the geographically closest operative – with  the correct skillset – in order to reduce travel and increase first-time fix rates.

QFM is also used for recording all lost property at the stadium. Previously, lost property records were kept in a hand-written book, or on a loose piece of paper. Visitors reporting lost property now are recorded in QFM, as well as the items which have been found. To cope with the sheer volume of items, they are categorised as green (one month old), orange (two months old) and red (three months or more, meaning that the items are ready for disposal). Each member of the events team receives a daily automated report from QFM to allow the lost property to be efficiently organised. After just a few weeks of implementing this functionality, 400 pieces of lost property were returned to 152 owners.

Visitor safety is paramount for a stadium, and one of the biggest UK football clubs was impressed with QFM’s incident management module. Guest safety is a key priority for the club, and through QFM it is able to manage incidents easily through mobile devices, using a simple pictorial interface. The software handles everything from recording the incidents to witness statements, any assets involved, and it immediately alerts safety officers to attend the scene.

Tokyo 2020 has aimed to be the greenest-ever Olympics, using sustainable materials and renewable energy where possible. For example, the aquatic centre uses solar panels and a geothermal equipment system to heat the pool’s water. Of course, technology such as this is also being used outside of the Olympics by organisations looking to reduce their carbon footprint or even achieve net zero. For example, Pymble Ladies’ College in Australia uses solar photovoltaic panels to provide electricity, a combined heating system for the pool and domestic hot water systems and jet fans to provide assisted natural ventilation to the underground car park. FMs are expected to deal with a growing number of assets and technology, and CAFM software is essential to manage PPM schedules, enable easy access to asset history for engineers, or even access asset manuals to better service new or unfamiliar equipment.

Learn more about how QFM CAFM software can help FM teams manage the challenges of running a stadium here, or watch a quick demo of QFM in action.

 

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