How we prevented disaster on three major productions

On three of our builds this high season something went wrong that could have cost the client a delay, money, or even ended in disaster.

• One of our vans broke down on the autobahn on a public holiday.
• On another build, a crew member had to travel back to Poland on the first morning.
• At a festival, the crew had tough sleeping conditions.
• On a fixed installation job in Germany, the tool list we received turned out to be incomplete.

In all three cases our crew started work as planned.

Here is what happened, and what made each recovery possible.

01 – Long-term planning, on the Wacken build

In May a client confirmed a tent build at Wacken for July, which gave us two full months of notice.

We used that time for two things. We booked accommodation while rooms were still available in the area, so we paid a normal rate instead of a festival-week rate. We also had our full crew list to choose from, which meant we could send people who had experience with that type of build.

It is easier to see the value of those two months by looking at a job where we did not have them. Another German festival was confirmed seven days before load-in. It was the same country and the same kind of work, but by that point nothing sensible was left within range of the site, and our crew slept in residential containers on the festival ground where it was over 30 degrees inside.

Not a great solution if you need a fresh and rested crew on the next day, but we took care of that by getting fans and mobile air conditioning the next day.

Both builds were delivered by qualified people, so the difference is not the quality of the work. The difference is that with two months of notice you get back the same crew that built your site last year, and you pay the accommodation price you budgeted for.

With seven days, both of those become whatever the market has left, and you might get an accommodation that does not provide the right conditions for the crew to be fresh and rested on the morning of the next hard working day.

02 – Flexibility when something breaks

On the travel day to a job in Bad Homburg, one of our vans broke down on the autobahn. It was a public holiday, the temperature was around 40 degrees, and we were 90 minutes from the hotel.

Roadside assistance offered to reach us in eight hours, so we started calling hotels along the route instead, and one of the owners agreed to drive out and collect our crew himself.

Then we looked for a replacement vehicle. Three rental companies had nothing available, and the only car we could find nearby was a Fiat 500, which is not a car for scaffolders with tools. So we loaded one of our own cars onto a tow truck in Poland and sent it to Germany overnight.

In the same week, another crew member on that build was not fit for work and had to return to Poland on the first morning. We had a replacement on site twelve hours later. He was already in Germany, finishing another job, so he did not need to travel from Poland at all.

We cannot prevent a public holiday or a broken van. What we can do is follow the emergency procedures we put in place, and move people across Europe on the same day, without waiting for an office to open on Monday morning. That is the difference between a build that starts as planned and a build that does not.

03 – Crew chiefs who can decide on site

Before a fixed installation job, we get the plan and the tool list, and we pack according to that list. On one installation job in Germany this year, the list did not cover everything the site actually required.

Our crew chief saw the gap on the first morning, drove to a hardware store, bought what was missing, and had our crew working as planned. Nobody paid out of their own pocket and nobody waited a month to be reimbursed.

Two things made that possible. Every crew chief on a long or unpredictable job now carries a company payment card, so the money is available on site. More importantly, our crew chiefs are trained to make that decision on their own, and they know the company stands behind it.

A crew chief who has to call another country for approval on a purchase of 40 euro will usually wait instead, and then the problem lands on the client’s schedule.

Future of Festivals, Berlin, 25 and 26 November

We will be at Future of Festivals, Station Berlin, stand 3-L11.

We go there for the same reason we wrote this article. None of these problems belong to one company, and no company solves them alone. The industry gets better when people share what they learned.

Come and find us, and tell us your version of the broken van story.

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