Superstorm Sandy
The New York City Marathon faced such a situation in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, two years prior during late October 2012. This powerful storm struck the New York metropolitan area a week before the race, after leaving a trail of devastation stretching from the Caribbean and all along the Eastern Seaboard. Millions in the tristate region remained without power or heat when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the city’s intention to host the race to give the region “something to cheer about.” Instead, the potential diversion of emergency resources to a sports event generated enormous controversy. “Many were offended by the notion that the city would put resources in the form of police presence, water and food supplies, and electric generators toward the race while communities remain without basic services,” wrote Meredith Melnick in The Huffington Post. “Some were so adamant that they created online campaigns to prevent the foot race.” A few days later, the mayor reversed the decision. Mayor Bloomberg and then New York Road Runners (NYRR) president Mary Wittenberg released a joint statement saying: “While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division.” The race was canceled for the first time in its 42-year history.
Rescheduling the Super Bowl from a Sunday?
Canceling the Super Bowl was simply not an option. But, if we faced a similar scenario, could we play the game the following Sunday, or two Sundays after? We had contingency plans for those possibilities. Rescheduling the Super Bowl would be a task of gargantuan complexity, so it was better to think through how to do that well before the weather forecast suggested we must.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had an even more interesting twist to add to the plan. If the forecast called for a blizzard on Sunday, he asked, could we possibly stage the game on Saturday night and return everyone safely home before the storm began? We would need to create a plan that ensured that stadium employees, police officers, traffic and safety officials, railroad engineers, bus drivers, and the thousands of others we needed to stage the game would also be rescheduled if we had to activate this option. We determined that we would need to make that call no later than Thursday at noon. Once an announcement to play Saturday was made publicly, it would be so newsworthy that few would be caught unaware. The issue, really, was confirming how many of the thousands of people we relied on to make game day happen we would be able to mobilize on Saturday and we would only have about 36 hours to get that figured out.
The real risk inherent in making that decision, of course, was whether we would know enough on Thursday about the track and severity of a potential storm on Sunday. We all know how inaccurate weather forecasts can be that far ahead. We could well have moved heaven and earth on a Thursday to play the game on Saturday and later wake up to a crisp, but beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon in New Jersey. Meanwhile, we would have forced the cancellation of all those Saturday night Super Bowl parties booked by sponsors, charities, media companies, and others. The reputational and financial risks of that outcome were certainly significant, but the risk of looking foolish would have been overridden by concerns for public and player safety. Luckily, we never had to make that call.
Because we had a good handle on our contingencies, we were prepared with options and action plans well ahead of time. The number of productive human-hours planning the response was massive. Although we experienced record cold temperatures all season long, it was Super Bowl IX—played at Tulane University in New Orleans on January 12, 1975—that retained its claim as the coldest kickoff on record for the event, at 46 degrees.
For Super Bowl XLVIII, MetLife Stadium was an unexpectedly balmy 49 degrees when the Denver Broncos received the opening kick. The Farmer’s Almanac forecast had missed by a hair. Snow began falling three hours after the time expired and by morning, enough fresh powder had dropped to cancel more than 45 percent of all the outbound flights on Monday.
CONTINGENCY PLANS: RE-IMAGINING PLAN A
Developing contingencies can inform the entire project management process and cause us to re-imagine Plan A while we still have time to do so. Focusing attention on contingency creation early in the planning process can help expose fatal flaws and potential weaknesses in our original plan, and encourage us to either fine-tune Plan A, or completely replace it with an entirely new strategy more likely to succeed. Provided that we have the time, we should not be shy about elevating a contingency idea to Plan A if we believe doing so can correct a deficiency in our preparations or improve our project’s performance.
While true for entirely new initiatives, it is perhaps even more important to not overlook the importance of contingency planning for endeavors that are repeated throughout the year, annually, or in different markets. Even subtle shifts in the business environment, customer sentiment, and other variables can significantly impact outcomes. Or perhaps an underlying lack of preparation that could address a potential problem has simply not yet been exposed because things have always gone right in the past. That is why it is essential to avoid falling into the trap of “dusting off plans that have always worked before” without considering contingencies for yet-unexperienced challenges.
The First Halftime Show in an Outdoor Winter Environment
The Super Bowl XLVIII halftime show at MetLife Stadium was the first one to be held in an outdoor winter environment. In the past, the show’s set-up and removal involved as many as 600 crew members who burst out of the tunnels at a literal run to set up the stage, sound equipment, and effects in the middle of the field in just eight minutes. Weighing as much as 10 tons, the stage is typically designed in 25 or more segments atop enormous wheels that are navigated from a huge tent in the parking lot and through the tunnels beneath the stadium onto the field. The pressure to set up the entire stage and all of its components within the time allotted, and its removal within seven minutes, is enormous and one of the great logistical spectacles that the television audience never sees. Unless, of course, something goes wrong.
We relied on speed and precision for the halftime setup, but safety is always the overriding concern. Our greatest fear was the possibility that one or more of the stage crew could slip on an icy field during those frantic, frenetic minutes, and possibly get caught under the truck-sized wheels. That prospect was unthinkable on so many levels that from the outset, we had to think about the annual halftime show very differently, as though ice or snow would surely glaze the field. We started doing just that almost three years before the game, long before anyone knew what the halftime show would actually be. Our stage designer, Bruce Rodgers, joined me for a chilly winter visit to MetLife Stadium to figure out what to do.
First, we considered building the stage in the stands so it would not have to be wheeled out at all, but there were a host of issues that made that option unattractive. For one, the stage would be a big empty platform most of the time. Getting the performers to it would mean walking them through the audience, certainly not ideal. And, we would need to remove somewhere between 200 and 500 seats, which would cost up to $750,000 in lost ticket revenue.
Bruce then explored the notion we ultimately embraced, building most of the halftime stage against the wall behind one of the team benches and leaving it there throughout the game. We decorated the front of the stage with the same banners that adorned the rest of the field-level walls, so the stage was essentially invisible until the teams left the benches after the first half. Bruce designed a retractable runway and two rolling arches of video screens, which could be wheeled over the player benches without touching any of the team’s equipment, supplies, heating units, or game-time communications gear. He found a way to safely convert what looked like a decorated false wall into an effects-laden stage that would eventually host spectacular performances by Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, without having to move very much across a potentially frozen field.
Our contingency planning process entirely changed a 48-year old Plan A, moving tons of
equipment across a potentially slippery field, to creating a different way to achieve the same spectacle without adding physical risks. We were able to achieve this because we began crafting contingencies early in the planning process, with sufficient time to plot a different course that would almost entirely avoid the impact of winter weather instead of having to activate a Plan B based on approaching weather, or worse, a potential injury.
CONTINGENCY COSTS
The costs of developing contingency plans are most often expressed in human terms. That is, time and people are required to focus, imagine, and prepare for deviations from the standard procedure or the core plan. Often, time- and staff-constrained project leaders delegate some aspects of contingency planning to a third party, such as a security consultant, public relations agency, regulatory consultant, insurance broker, or even an event management company, depending on the size, scope, and nature of potential threats to success.
Planning contingencies, of course, often pales in comparison to actually executing those plans. Imagining that a snowstorm could greatly reduce the number of cars we could park at MetLife Stadium didn’t actually cost very much at all. The real costs would be encountered in renting more off-site property to accommodate the parking spaces we would have lost. We did just that because there was no less expensive solution available, and perhaps no solution at all if we didn’t act to acquire them months ahead of time. It was better for us to contract with land owners and set the real estate aside well in advance, while the leverage to strike a reasonable deal was still on our side and, frankly, having no solution to insufficient parking was not an option.
The best contingency plans, of course, require little expenditure of money until you need to act on them. Securing access to services and materials that might be required to mitigate the possibility of something going wrong can shrink your response time to an event, but not necessitate having to pay for those things unless you actually need them.
Good planners and budgeters always consider the unknown and include a contingency factor in their financial plans. Resist conflating the notion of a “miscellaneous” budget line and a “contingency.” Miscellaneous expenses is a catch-all category to aggregate small expenditures that don’t fit any specific expense line. A contingency factor is different. This is a set-aside amount for expenses that you simply didn’t plan for.
When possible, I try to reserve 10 percent to 15 percent of any cost estimate for the unforeseeable. The greater the unknowns, the higher the allocation toward contingencies should be. How, you might ask, can we oxymoronically know there is a greater number of unknowns? Any number of factors can increase the likelihood of encountering unplanned costs, including the following:
• If the product, activity, or content is entirely new
• If the product, activity, or content relies on new, emerging, or unproven technologies
• If the product, activity, or content is subject to uncertainty due to regulatory review
• If the product, activity, or content is dependent on a new staff, a new facility, or a new vendor relationship
If you ultimately don’t use the budget you set aside for contingencies, your profit and loss (P&L) statement will look better. If you need the contingency funds, but don’t have them, be sure that your 401(k) is fully vested. Would you prefer to bet your project or career on the hope that everything will turn out just fine?
7
HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY
It was a brutally cold day in January 1993, even for Montreal. Weeks-old banks of greyish snow were piled high at every intersection where a fresh, slick layer of translucent ice had been pounded into shiny, flat sheets better suited to skating than to steering. Can you think of a more appropriate setting for the NHL’s All-Star Weekend? I led the league’s events department and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman had started his new job just four days before.
It was important to make a great impression on the new boss, but it was infinitely more important to make an impression on hockey fans because it was also the 100th year that the Stanley Cup was awarded. Some sports fans in North America may not know a thing about the “Great Frozen Game,” but they do recognize the iconic shape of the Stanley Cup. Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, the governor-general of Canada, donated a magnificent bowl of sterling silver in 1893 to be awarded to the dominant amateur hockey club in the Dominion of Canada. This was 24 years before the founding of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917, which sometime after its advent had convinced the Cup’s trustees that awarding the trophy to the highest level of competition in professional hockey was the best way to promote the sport across North America.
There is only one real Stanley Cup. It’s the one you see on the ice when a team wins the NHL championship; it’s the one that the players kiss and hold above their heads as they skate around the arena at the end of the deciding game. There is a replica of the Stanley Cup that is exact in almost every detail, except for some deliberate features that enable the Hockey Hall of Fame to tell the two apart. If you see the Stanley Cup anywhere outside of the “temple” to the sport on Yonge and Front Streets in downtown Toronto, it is THE Stanley Cup. The replica never leaves the Hockey Hall of Fame and it is only displayed when the real Stanley Cup is on the road. Over the summer, each of the champion players take turns returning with the chalice to their hometowns around the world. When the NHL season gets started again in the fall, it is right back at the Hall of Fame, and you’ll have to earn it all over if you want to see it again.
For the Stanley Cup’s 100th birthday in Montreal, where ice hockey is a religion, we knew we had to do something really special. What better way to celebrate an All-Star Game during this auspicious anniversary year than to bring back three beloved Montreal Canadiens legends, with 23 Stanley Cup championships among them, and have them skate around the ice for one more time holding the trophy high above their heads?
ABANDON HOPE
It was a Saturday afternoon more frozen than the Montreal Forum ice as Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, Jean Béliveau, and Guy LaFleur donned skates and white Montreal Canadiens jerseys. The Forum atmosphere was electric, the air was abuzz with animated debates in French and English about the Canadiens’ chances of winning another Stanley Cup that season (which they did). Three gods from the pantheon of Canadiens hockey waited just off the ice, hidden underneath the stands where the Zamboni was dumping its load of shavings after grooming the ice into a sheet as smooth as a baby’s cheek. Our stage manager assigned to cue the entrance of the Cup went through his checklist when he arrived at the Zamboni gate.
“The Stanley Cup is not in the building,” he determined.
I knew where it was supposed to have been earlier that afternoon. The president of NHL Enterprises was hosting a pregame brunch for the League’s business partners at our headquarters hotel, and the Stanley Cup was the featured guest of honor. I honestly wasn’t comfortable with that and I had told him that I would rather have the Cup at the Forum early, well before we needed it. I was assured that the trophy would be there in plenty of time.
If everything went as planned, there were about 90 minutes between the end of the brunch and the beginning of the event. I hoped it would be enough time, and when I got the radio call, there were still 15 minutes to go. “They’re cutting it awfully close,” I muttered to Jack Budgell, the game producer. “We could be really screwed,” I said to myself.
The event was televised and subject to strict time constraints. We could not be late. We could either do it, or not do it. “Any sign of the Cup?” I asked the stage manager 10 minutes before we went to air. I asked myself, “How did I enjoy my first and only year at the NHL?”
We contacted the broadcast team in the production truck to let them know that we might have to dump the segment, and with less than five minutes to go, we put the call out that this highly anticipated moment was off. I had just finished sharing the disappointing news when a seemingly miraculous report came over the wal
kie-talkie: The Cup just entered the building. “Get it into Rocket’s hands and let’s go,” I responded. “We’re back on!”
It was one of those moments that we knew would start our event off with a bang. And, that’s exactly the sound that a priceless, sterling silver, 100-year-old national treasure makes when it’s dropped 8 feet to the ice. It slipped right out of Maurice Richard’s hands and I still recall that sound with utter clarity because 16,000 hockey fans became totally silent at the very moment the Stanley Cup proved that gravity was still a law. Jack and I watched from the press level as Richard recovered both his poise and the trophy. He lifted it again over his head as he, Béliveau, and LaFleur skated around the ice to fans roaring with appreciation. We could see, even from the press box, that the Cup would require a skilled silversmith when the game was over. It was seriously dented, and we were, too.
The Stanley Cup had made it to the Montreal Forum just in time, but it might have been better if it hadn’t. The ice storm had traffic gridlocked. The trophy had left the brunch as it ended, and was being escorted by Phil Pritchard, the Hockey Hall of Fame’s “Cup Keeper.” Both were sitting in the back of a taxi pointed toward the arena, but the taxi was getting nowhere fast. The Cup was nestled comfortably inside a foam-filled road box, which was visually unremarkable except for the “fragile” and “heavy” stickers wallpapering the outside. The Cup was heavy alright, and about to prove how fragile it really was.
What to Do When Things Go Wrong Page 8