In July I wrote about our excitement at winning the contract to provide Managed IT Services at the new Salt Lake City International Airport.
I’m delighted to report that the new South Terminal opened, on schedule, on September 15, 2020 and the new North Terminal opened, as planned, on October 27, 2020.
As I wrote in our press release, issued in August when we formally announced that we had won the contract, the new airport is “stunning” – and such a contrast to the tired old terminals which have served the people of Utah for so many years.
The journey
It was an interesting journey from ‘you’ve won’ to our official start date of September 1, 2020. Typically, the view is that no matter how well or badly something goes, at least you should get a good story out of it – the transition team agrees that we probably could write a book about setting up SLC!
Starting with the appreciation! A huge “thank you” to Jack Liu for being willing to relocate his life – and his golden retriever, Salonpas – to Salt Lake City for several weeks; kudos to the rest of the transition team of Laura Becker, Pietro Como, Patrick Barrett, Jay Singh and Tony Dellagnola for all their hard work in pulling this together; many thanks to Lorraine Halliday and Heidi Cooper for generating all the employment offers in double-quick time; also thanks to Michael Kerr and Mike Motts for hosting Tony then Cory and John at OAK for training and to Kevin Lee for ending his shift at CLT then pretty much jumping straight on a flight to SLC to share his experience of using the systems in a live environment.
So, we needed to set up a new site with multiple service elements in a new state and with a short transition time – plus the small matter of a pandemic!
What could possibly go wrong?!
Plenty! But we did it – our full team was onboard and ready on September 1.
Our first hire was our Site Manager, Tony Dellagnola, who joined at the beginning of August (and must have wondered what he was getting himself in to). (You can find out a bit more about Tony in his Getting to Know article.)
After Tony we were able to identify our other team members (Deputy Site Manager Pat, Anteny, Camron, Cory, Dan, Dawn, Derrick, John, Matt, Michael, Rob, Tatiana, Terry and Win). Having had the chance to meet them all I firmly believe Tony and his team will represent ServiceTec very well at SLC (don’t let me down!).
So how did we make it work?
- We had a cross-functional transition team and we had a comprehensive transition plan.
- We collaborated and regularly communicated.
- We quickly realized that, while the SLCDA people we met were all really nice and tried their best to help, they had to focus on opening the new airport so we had to be as self-reliant as possible. That meant using our experience and leveraging our contacts – and ‘cold calling’ if we had to!
- We didn’t have a local mailing address for deliveries and we needed somewhere to stay (and interview potential employees) – so we rented a house. (The local Amazon Prime driver was a regular caller! Jack also spent a lot of time and money in CostCo).
- We maintained our senses of humor – and the house’s supplies of alcohol and ice cream!
Salonpas appointed himself as guard dog!
