Wimbledon Centre Court throughout the process was key : “ It was really important to keep calm . I said to everyone that they had to have three things ; a smile , a can-do attitude and sense of humour .”
World Cup and delivered many major sporting events including the feasibility of the Invictus Games and its inaugural event in London 2014 .
As a result of her extensive experience , Dite says that when she started working on Wimbledon she felt very comfortable despite the challenge : “ I ’ d been involved in a lot of start-up events whereby things happened very late . I tend to work on the 80 / 20 rule whereby if you get 80 % of an event in place you just allow the other 20 % to happen . It allows you to be flexible and adjust to the environment around you .”
Among the myriad challenges involved in staging the Wimbledon Championships this year , Dite says the biggest was managing the uncertainty around the spectator capacity which remained until two weeks prior to the gates opening : “ We were following the government roadmap and had various ticketing scenarios based on the Sports Grounds Safety Authority ( SGSA ) guidance , which would have given us about 25 % of full capacity . We also developed a 50 % capacity model and a 75 % model .
“ Our plans were based on the facilities and services we needed to provide . So , whether that be food and drink facilities , the scheduling on court , crowd dynamics ; all sorts of things were built around the number of people that were going to come through the grounds .”
Dite says that some members of the AELTC team felt more comfortable than others about delaying decisions until as late as possible , and so a willingness to support each other
Ace Service The uncertainty around capacity and social distancing was a major factor when engaging with suppliers . Dite says the AELTC is fortunate to have trusted and long-term relationships with suppliers , but the circumstances meant it also had to engage with a lot of new service providers , including mobile ticketing , which had to be put in place for the first time .
The long-term and trusted relationships are really important ,” she says . “ We had to make tough decisions , for example we work very closely with Keith Prowse who support our hospitality programme . We decided not to build one of the significant temporary structures for hospitality because we couldn ’ t see how we would be able to sell the hospitality in time if it was going to be such a late decision .
“ It was about trying to keep things simple . Another early decision was to cancel the general public queue that finds people camping overnight . By doing that we released supply requirements .”
Despite the need to hold off on making some decisions for as long as possible , Dite says the AELTC was very aware that suppliers were facing major challenges around resources and needed clarity : “ We tried to help as much as possible and by making early decisions as it helped them with recruitment and resources . We didn ’ t leave them hanging , we didn ’ t want people to be left either planning things that didn ’ t happen or planning things that materially were completely different to where we thought we might end up .
“ Our relationships with
31