Room booking to setup task handoff queue
Problem
A room or space booking goes into the shared calendar with a time, a duration and a name. What the room actually needs, a U-shaped table layout, a projector, name cards, a dais for a press conference, wheelchair access at the door, lives in the booker's head or an email thread the facilities team was never copied on. The estates coordinator finds out by ringing the booker the day before, if there is time, or guesses from what was booked last time. When the guess is wrong, the room gets reset on the morning of the event, provided someone notices in time. Nothing records what was actually requested against what was delivered, so a repeated failure with the same room or the same booker is invisible until someone complains loudly enough to be remembered.
Product idea
A setup-request layer that sits under the booking calendar. Confirming a booking opens a structured request: layout, AV, catering flag, access needs, dais or staging, any note that would otherwise live in an email. The request routes to the facilities team member responsible for that space, with a due-by time worked backwards from the event start rather than a fixed lead time. The assignee marks preparation complete or flags a conflict; the booker gets a plain confirmation the room will be ready as specified, not a guess. Anything unconfirmed as the due-by time approaches escalates automatically to the facilities manager instead of being discovered by someone walking the building before doors open. It does not manage catering orders, AV inventory or room layout diagrams; it hands off the request and tracks whether it was actioned.
Who it is for
Estates coordinators and facilities staff who currently take setup requests by phone or email, and the facilities manager who wants to know before doors open, not after, when a room was not set as requested.
Possible first version
A structured setup-request form created manually when a booking is confirmed, since v1 does not read the booking calendar automatically. A routing rule assigns each space to a named team member, a due-by time is calculated backwards from the event start, and the assignee marks the request complete or flags a problem. An escalation email goes to the facilities manager if nothing is confirmed by the cutoff. Out of scope for v1: automatic ingestion from the booking calendar, any catering or AV inventory system, and layout diagrams. Requests are typed in directly by the booker or coordinator.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Estates coordinator, Facilities manager, Venue operations director
- Relevant to
- Venue & stadium operator, Professional club, Collegiate athletics, Federation / governing body
- Systems in play
- Booking and scheduling calendars, Messaging apps, Maintenance and work-order systems
- Product framing
- Automate a workflow
Questions we get asked
What do we need in place before this could work for us?
A list of spaces with one named person responsible for setup in each, and the lead time each type of event realistically needs before doors open. Nothing from the booking calendar needs to be extracted or synced to start: version one has the booker or coordinator enter the setup request directly, so the only real prerequisite is agreeing who owns each space and by when a request should be actioned before the cutoff escalates it.
Does this replace the booking calendar we already use for rooms?
No. The calendar keeps doing what it does: reserving the time and the space. This sits underneath it and handles the part the calendar was never built for, the setup requirement itself, who is doing it, and whether it got done. A booking with no linked setup request is still a valid booking; it just means nobody has told facilities what the room needs yet.
Our estates team already rings the booker to check what a room needs. Why build something for that?
A good phone call works fine until the coordinator who makes it is on leave, or the booking lands on a Friday afternoon and the call never happens. This is not a better version of that call, it is what exists when the call does not. The request and its confirmation become something a manager can see without asking, rather than living in one person's memory of who they rang.
What happens when a booking is made the same morning as the event?
The setup request can be created the moment the booking is confirmed, and the due-by time is worked out from the event start rather than a fixed number of days. If that leaves little lead time, the request is flagged urgent to the assignee and the facilities manager at the same time, rather than waiting for the normal escalation window to pass. What it cannot do is chase a booking nobody entered: if the request itself is never created, there is nothing to escalate.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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