Winter Olympics 2010 Staffing Opportunities
Vancouver Special Events Company Offers Diversified Labour Services
Mar 29, 2009
About 500,000 fans are expected to attend the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver from February 12 to 28, 2010. Visitors from outside British Columbia will account for almost half of that audience.
Among the 9 Winter Olympic competition venues, four are in Vancouver: Canada Hockey Place (ice hockey), Vancouver Olympic Centre (curling), Pacific Coliseum (figure & speed skating) and UBC Thunderbird Arena (ice & ice sledge hockey). Metropolitan Vancouver’s Richmond Olympic Oval will also host speed skating.
Just west of Vancouver, Cyprus Mountain will be home to freestyle skiing and snowboarding. About 120 kilometres north of Vancouver, Whistler will feature three other venues: The Whistler Sliding Centre (bobsleigh, luge & skeleton), Whistler Creekside (alpine skiing) and Whistler Olympic Park (biathlon, cross-country skiing, nordic combined & ski jumping).
Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic Games will translate into thousands of highly varied temporary jobs such as site construction, food concession sales, snow removal, sporting event promotions and ushering.
Nasco Staffing Solutions
Headquartered in Vancouver, Nasco Staffing Solutions is Canada’s largest event staffing company. Nasco was established in 1993 as an answer to the growing temporary staffing needs of the special event, concert and entertainment industries.
With more than 2,500 skilled workers in its fast-growing national database registry, Nasco has earned a reputation as a nimble resource provider for large and small-scale projects.
Business Competitive Advantages
Nasco’s head office in downtown Vancouver is less than 2 kilometres away from BC Place Stadium. The latter is where opening, closing and nightly Olympics victory presentation ceremonies will take place.
Another competitive advantage for Nasco is the fact that its diverse workforce spans four major task-specific categories. Examples for each category are shown below within brackets.
- Production technical projects (audio/lighting/video technicians, riggers, set carpenters and stagehands)
- Conferences and events (bilingual booth assistants, computer registration staff, hosts and transportation coordinators)
- Promotions and marketing gigs (mascots, models, sales assistants and street promotion teams)
- Food and beverage venues (banquet servers, bartenders, coat check and wait staff).
In an exclusive interview with Suite101, Nasco’s Director of Sales and Marketing Alex Bickers recently shared his vision of how Nasco has literally become a workforce one-stop shop:
“The way I like to look at it is the client’s trucks show up for the event. Nasco production technical workers including forklift drivers unload the vehicles and then set up the client’s equipment and materials. Nasco then supplies all required computer registration staff, directional hosting resources, promotional activation staff as well as servers and bartenders. After the event ends, Nasco production staff tear down and load the disassembled equipment back onto the trucks for the client to drive away.”
Special Events Experience
According to its Winter 2008 newsletter, Nasco has already secured 12 long-term, exclusive venue contracts across Canada including Vancouver’s new UBC Winter Sports Centre.
In late 2007, Nasco staffed the Viennese romantic spectacle Andre Rieu which the Guiness Book of World Records recognizes as having the biggest set ever built as well as being the largest logistical operation ever undertaken. Over 14 days, Nasco supplied more than 250 workers daily to cover round-the-clock shifts. For rigging and lighting alone, Nasco filled close to 600 positions.
Another testament to Nasco’s ability to resource Olympic-sized projects was the first-ever Pemberton Festival from July 25 to 27, 2008, Canada’s largest outdoor summer concert. Nasco setup and site crews collaborated to produce 3 days of excellent music on sets constructed on a 400-acre hayfield north of Whistler, British Columbia. Cleanup crews worked 24-hour shifts to remove garbage from over 40,000 fans who visited the outdoor festival to hear headliners including Coldplay, Jay-z and the Tragically Hip.
Servicing Peak Job Demand Periods
Nasco’s aggressive recruiting and training specialists in both Vancouver and Toronto are adept at attracting and retaining a wide variety of enthusiastic and experienced workers.
Over the past 16 years, Nasco has also established key business partnerships and network contacts within the close-knit special events industry. Relationships with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), Tourism Toronto and Tourism Vancouver show how committed Nasco is to keeping current with client needs.
Winter Olympics Puts Vancouver under the Microscope
No doubt staffing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics will mean long shifts, last-minute rush requests and non-stop service activities.
Yet rigorously resourcing for the multitude of tasks required to effectively serve 500,000 Winter Olympics attendees will confirm Vancouver’s place among world-class cities.
Effectively staffing the 2010 Winter Olympics will also mean more business opportunities for Vancouver after the Games are over. This is particularly true for entrepreneurial skilled labour companies like Nasco.
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