Event-based facilities management

Event management and facilities management are generally regarded as two separate disciplines. However, for a number of specialised facilities this separation has become blurred. This paper describes a new undergraduate course in event and facilities management at Bond University that formalises this connection. Using the Melbourne Cricket Ground as a case study, the paper identifies how much of the routine facilities planning, including maintenance, cleaning, security, refurbishment and capital improvement, are treated as events and integrated with sporting fixtures as part of the annual event calendar. It is proposed that a similar situation is occurring with other specialised facilities, such as hotels and resorts, entertainment centres and tourist venues. Event management and facilities management are shown to share a number of core areas of competency, such as those relating to procurement and sourcing, planning and scheduling, customer service delivery and sustainability, and validates the concept adopted at Bond for the new program. The paper explores the opportunity to collaborate on the teaching of each discipline with a view to further optimising the performance of these types of specialised facilities, including the integration of generic business skills with discipline-specific content using a practical problem-based approach.