Guilford Spectrum

The leisure centre is obviously located in Guilford and is owned and managed by Guilford Borough Council. There was a leisure centre situated in Guilford in the 1970’s but due to the country being in recession and the leisure industry not being peoples’ priority, it was in desperate needs of funding (300,000 per annum). Due to this the old land was sold and is now an Odeon cinema and Tesco superstore. The council still recognised the need for leisure facilities and had it not been for the sale of the two pieces of land there would be no spectrum today.

The Spectrum cost i?? 28. 154 million to build which seems expensive but when you see the list of facilities it has, the cost does not seem that excessive. The Spectrum built many conventional facilities such as the competition pool, squash courts, arena and aerobics studio as well as commercial facilities like the bowling alleys, ice rink, leisure pool and a health suite. Due to the clever planning of the ‘right’ facilities, Guilford council is now one of the only authorities to actually make an operating surplus.

This surplus then gets re-invested back into the leisure centre to make constant improvements on the facilities for the customers. The Spectrum is marketed as not only a facility for local residents, but also as a tourist attraction and major events venue, so therefore branding is essential. The name of the complex was decided through a competition within the borough and sums up the numerous facilities, activities and schemes on offer. The Spectrum flame was designed to incorporate parts of the Guildford Borough logo and to be completely unique.

Inspiration came from the Olympic flame as the Olympics bring many people together for a variety of different activities, something Spectrum is also proud to do. Customer service should be at the forefront of any successful organisation. This is why companies should have some sort of mission statement to incorporate this.

This is what I found for the Spectrum: “Several Statements have been designed to assist staff with providing excellent customer service. Guildford Spectrum’s Mission Statement is:”To provide and manage profitably, a comprehensive range of top quality leisure facilities which are accessible and which represent value for money for local residents and other potential users” And the Top Line Objective is: “To provide the best possible service to our customers”.  This report will focus on just two operation techniques, the theory behind them and how the Spectrum could incorporate these strategies to help improve their operations.

It will start by looking at capacity management, followed by health and safety. Capacity Management First of all a definition of capacity management, which is ‘the ability to hold, receive, store, or accommodate’ (Chase et al, 2004 p388). This means, in a business sense, the amount of output that a system is capable of achieving over a specific period of time. In this case how many people the Spectrum can accommodate daily. There are four capacity related measures. Most of the following measures must be used for successful capacity management.