Avantgarde organised the 40th National Day of Oman, with more than 90 production consultants and 120 suppliers from all over the world. Where did they come from?
Off the top of my head I would say our main suppliers were sourced from Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, US, Australia, Dubai, Oman. However there were countless other nationalities from within these teams. I would say 23 in total.
What were your biggest challenges regarding logistics and mobility?
In terms of logistics I would say the complexities of an event of this scale are always challenging. You have to bear in mind as well that suppliers in Oman are not geared up to providing much in technical support for a show of this size simply because these shows don’t happen all the time. Therefore, there is a lot of outsourcing going on. Having said that, we do always make a great effort to work with local production to the greatest extent possible. Our technical setup alone started three months prior to the event, and within that time we moved more than 500 tons of equipment by air, sea and land. Given the volume of equipment needing to be cleared through customs and in coordination with the authorities we devised a procedure for clearing all shipments directly at the stadium to ensure there were no delays.
What did you learn from that job?
In working with government it’s important to understand and adapt to their processes, which do not necessarily comply with your own model of how things need to get done.
Avantgarde is not only travelling around the world for clients in Oman. How do you make sure, that everything gets to the events in time?
This comes through meticulous planning at a very early stage, and it’s about having the right structures in place, so that if things do go wrong you can react in time. The team has to monitor all elements, which are linked to each other. You constantly need to be aware that missing a deadline can cause a ripple effect through your entire organisation and planning. Specifically, when it comes to shipping multiple event components to different countries you really need to work with industry specialists. In our case, for the event in Oman we worked very closely with EFM Worldwide. They understand the nature of our business perfectly.
Do you feel increasing pressure in regards to move manpower and material around the world?
We don’t really feel pressure in taking care of these aspects, because they are almost second nature by now. It’s simply a matter of good communication, and often clients need to be guided carefully so they understand how delays in processes might affect the supply chain.
