Re-Paving the Road to Project Success in Themed, Entertainment, and Cultural Destination Development

From Zoos and Aquariums to Theme Parks, Science Centers, and Heritage Parks; from special events to seasonal attractions; and from ‘quick burn’ pop-ups to multi-year developments, project success can always be traced back to a clear vision and strong Project Delivery Roadmap. 

The roadmap is an essential tool to guide a project and its team members through all stages of development, ensuring creative technical visions are met while being buildable, on budget, and within schedule. 

Depending on the project complexity, the roadmap could resemble a small town with a few stops down a main street, or a city with a complex network of highways and side streets all required to get from point A to point B. 

Regardless of scale, all successful Project Delivery Roadmaps have the same things in common:

• A solid foundation
• Alignment of goals for the journey
• A clear understanding of the necessary pit stops, or gates, along the way

The roadmap ensures that all team members and stakeholders are along for the ride together and in support of each other, and that no one veers off the path or takes a shortcut which could jeopardize successfully reaching the destination together.

But what if the industry landscape and terrain has changed since your Project Delivery Roadmap was established?

Or what if your map was put on hold and never got completed in the first place?

As we emerge into 2022, paths that were previously well planned and charted may no longer be viable for a variety of reasons beyond our control. 

Roads may have closed, infrastructure may have crumbled, detours may be in place, rerouting may be necessary. 

How do you approach your roadmap when the world around us may have changed? 

Back to the Basics

When a project hits a roadblock at any stage, it is tempting to just push forward. Fears of backtracking and wasting initial planning, funds, and time are daunting.

However, if the once-solid road has a potential crack, it is essential to pull over and assess the situation.

Based on many years of developing, managing, and building successful attractions for all levels of themed entertainment projects, nFusion has formulated an industry-specific program management approach with key Project Gates.

Rather than evaluating projects at the end of typical design phases, the Gates are specifically established to answer four key questions throughout the lifecycle of a development to ensure project success:

1. Is it  feasible?
2. Is it deliverable?
3. Is it  buildable?
4. Is it operable?

Regardless of what phase your project is in when a roadblock occurs, it is essential that these questions be revisited, reviewed, and confirmed. If an answer to any of these questions has become no, this method and partnering with nFusion can help prevent you from having to start your journey over at the start. 

Just like tuning up a car mid-road trip, we can run diagnostics, evaluate which parts and pieces may need to be adjusted, replaced, or re-synched, advise how to re-stock your emergency supplies, and help you rebuild a realistic and revised Project Delivery Roadmap with any necessary detours to keep things moving forward and ultimately, achieve project success.

Similarly, it is possible that due to changes in the world, you may have had to re-think your ultimate destination. Perhaps rather than moving from point A to point B, your map now needs to be rerouted to point C (or even D, E, F). Charting a new map with adjusted goals is possible and nFusion will work with you to ask the right questions to drive realignment and recommunication of goals between all stakeholders.

Driving Alignment, Delivering Simplicity

Roadblocks and detours during a project’s lifecycle are normal, but left unmanaged can also lead to confusion, frustration, and shifting priorities. It is easy for team members to fall out of alignment and start to veer in different directions. Often there may be more than one detour available, and too-good-to-be-true short cuts start to look more appealing. Unrealistic promises start being made in the guise of demonstrating progress. There is also a tendency to “put the cart before the horse” and start to consider options that are out of sync with the Gates, increasing risk across the board.

It is imperative at these times that realignment of goals, reinforcement of objectives, and a collective re-mapping becomes a priority. This needs to be done in a way that reestablishes the project’s strong foundation and can be effectively communicated and implemented on all levels. Even if this requires a slight pause in the journey, it will pay off in the long run to prevent anyone from getting lost. 

Roadside Assistance for your Journey

The Companies of Nassal have extensive experiencing managing and delivering experiences around the world for over 35 years. From your idea to opening day, and through all the potential bumps, detours, and re-routing needed along the way, we take a different approach to managing, building, and delivering successful projects.

Our passionate team works collaboratively with all stakeholders on developing destinations and attractions to increase quality, optimize value, streamline implementation for project success.

The Nassal and nFusion difference comes with our incredibly skilled and passionate team with backgrounds in traditional and specialty design and construction and real-world knowledge of what it takes to map out, navigate, and course correct all steps of designing and building your projects.