Between-event window planning for Sydney Olympic Park venue back-of-house

Gaps between events vary from overnight to several weeks, and the right work is different in each. An overnight gap suits amenities, corridors and dock aprons. A few days allows kitchen deep cleaning, store clearing and floor treatment in defined areas. An extended break allows high-level work, plant areas and anything requiring access equipment.

The plan should therefore hold three task lists rather than one schedule. When a gap appears, the appropriate list is used. That structure means a two-day window is not spent on work that could have been done overnight, and it means a rare extended break is recognised as the opportunity it is rather than treated as a quiet period. Recording which list applies to which gap length, in the plan itself, is what allows a window to be used without a planning conversation first.

Venue catering operates in intense bursts and then stops entirely. Kitchen back-of-house therefore has no daily rhythm to build a schedule around, and the deep cleaning that a permanent kitchen would spread across weekly cycles has to be concentrated into the periods when the operation is dormant.

That suits a structured post-event programme: floors including under and behind equipment where staff can move it, walls and splashbacks, accessible ceiling surfaces, drains and store areas. Exhaust canopy and duct cleaning, grease trap servicing and equipment interiors remain with the venue's specialist contractors and are identified rather than assumed. Recording which equipment staff can move, and which they cannot, is worth settling before the first post-event programme rather than during it.

Large venues carry substantial plant serving air conditioning, water and power distribution, and much of it is inaccessible while an event is running. Those spaces accumulate through the season and are only reachable during a genuine break, which makes their programme entirely dependent on the calendar.

The plan should list them with the access requirement attached: which need a permit, which need an escort, which need equipment isolated by the venue's technical staff. Anything requiring isolation, confined space entry or work at height beyond safe reach is excluded and referred to the appropriate contractor rather than left in a schedule. Recording each plant space with its access requirement is what allows the venue to arrange permits or escorts ahead of an available window.