Gaming room projects are always challenging – especially as they exist in live environment hospitality settings. Works are always restricted to after-hours to ensure the existing gaming rooms are never closed. Additional safety and compliance measures must be implemented. And, critically, impacts on the customer experience and the venues operations need to be minimised.
Since 2017, Empire Project Management has overseen more than 75 gaming room projects in live environments in pubs and clubs. Some of the most complex projects were delivered for industry leading organisations like Club Central and Redcape Hotel Group.
The Challenges
Each of our gaming room projects have varied hugely in scope and size, ranging from $1 million refurbishments to the multi-million-dollar expansion of Club Central in Hurstville. In each scenario, we had to undertake detailed planning and engage with a diverse array of stakeholders including gaming managers, venue managers, gaming technicians, gaming base suppliers, signage contractors, designers and builders to ensure that all stakeholders comprehensively understood their role, the program and what was expected from them.
As a direct result of our very careful and forward planning, we were able to reconfigure and transform the gaming rooms whilst avoiding disruption to patrons and staff, to ensure that the venues were able to operate business as usual.
Unlike other projects, gaming rooms require the coordination of works to strictly be delivered after-hours. This small window of opportunity occurs only after the venue is closed for the day and cash clearance is completed. There was meticulous planning across every detail during the small after-hours windows to maximise productivity whilst minimising disruption to patron staff and the business as a whole.
Gaming rooms are also extremely strict in terms of regulatory and compliance requirements governed by NSW Health and the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation (OLGR).
An important key to our gaming room project success has been to remain nimble and agile. Despite implementing detailed planning, once the gaming machines were physically placed on the floor, they required further tweaking to ensure their placement provided the most optimised layout for future patron comfort and experience. Services reticulation was also pre-planned to allow for future adjustments of the gaming room layouts to be made, ensuring complete flexibility.
Due to the rapid progress of these projects and short timeframes, as many of the required items as possible were pro-actively
manufactured offsite. This highly coordinated exercise enabled each piece of the gaming room puzzle to fit as harmoniously as possible on the actual night of the EGM move. In addition to when the gaming room moves occured, extensive coordination was required for all services to be delivered such as climate control, audio visual, scent, overall aesthetics, furnishings, lighting, ambience and feng shui.
Our Solutions
Due to the sheer number of gaming room projects we have successfully managed, our team of experts have been able to develop robust and systemised checklists to cover everything from initial project discussions, all the way through the planning and design phases, preparing the works to be delivered onsite to then post the gaming machine move, ensuring a seamless handover to operations.
Our proven programs and checklists are used regardless of whether the project is moving 5 EGMs or 600 EGMs and anything in between.
As outlined above, gaming room moves and all required works around them will always occur after-hours to avoid operational disruption. Whilst Club venues can have 100s of EGMs, Pubs are restricted to a maximum of 30, which made it even more critical to swiftly move overnight to minimise disruption. With our comprehensive program, we split the works into half-hour increments to ensure a seamless transition. For the larger projects, we carefully orchestrated multiple gaming machine moves across several evenings.
In relation to the movement of ceilings, partitions and structures, we ensured these works also occurred prior to the night of the
planned EGM move. These works also required dust and noise protection methods as well as a strict cleaning regime to ensure it was tools down well before opening time. The venues were then thoroughly cleaned and re-arranged into a welcoming space for patrons before the venue doors opened.
As with all projects, the risk of budget blow-out is possible however, we ensured there was adequate contingency in the budgets as there were invariably more changes requested once the venue team saw things in situ and requested further tweaks and enhancements to the space and overall experience for patrons.
The common threads that ensures our project success in gaming rooms?
1. A deep understanding of each venue and the operational restrictions
2. A director led management approach designed specifically for live environments
3. Being known and applauded for liaising and coordinating with the gaming technicians and gaming managers as part of our general stakeholder group.
The Outcomes
Each of our gaming room projects has been successfully and thoughtfully executed on brief, on time and on budget, and with zero downtime to the operating venues.
Thanks to our team’s nimble approach during the planning, design and implementation phases, and our commitment to quality, safety, design and attention to detail, we have transformed the establishments into awe-inspiring, immersive hospitality destinations for us all to enjoy.
