Waste and consumables when attendance spikes at Sydney Olympic Park

Hand towel, toilet tissue and soap are consumed at a rate driven by attendance, and a stock level set for a normal week disappears within hours on a busy day. The failure is highly visible, immediately attributed to the cleaner, and entirely preventable with a reserve and a mid-event check. Ask each provider how they would size the reserve and where it would sit and whether anybody checks it before the doors open.

Ask who replenishes during the event as well. A cleaner attending only in the evening cannot restock a washroom at two in the afternoon, so somebody has to. Whether that is an additional attendance, a runner, or your own staff working from a stock the provider maintains, it needs deciding before the day rather than during it and it needs a name against it rather than a general expectation.

Bins fill at a rate set by attendance and are emptied at a rate set by a collection contract. On a large day those two rates diverge sharply, and the overflow becomes a cleaning complaint even though the cause is a collection schedule nobody adjusted. Ask each provider how they would handle the gap and what they would need from your waste contractor and who would arrange an additional collection if one is needed.

The practical answers are additional internal collections into a holding area, extra bins staged in advance, or a booked additional collection. Each requires coordination rather than effort. A provider who raises the question during the walkthrough has worked at a venue before, and their answer tells you whether they understand where the constraint actually sits and whether they would raise it before the day or on it.

Reserve stock and equipment need to be somewhere reachable during the event, and store rooms in venues are frequently locked, distant or repurposed on busy days. Agree where the reserve sits, who can open it, and whether the cleaner can move through the venue while it is occupied. Those three practicalities determine whether a good plan can actually be executed and they are the details most often left until the morning of an event.

Agree the communication path for the day too. Somebody notices a washroom problem and needs to reach whoever can fix it, quickly. A named contact on each side with a working number is enough, and it should be agreed in advance rather than assembled during an event when nobody has time to work out who is responsible for what and a number that is answered rather than diverted.