Greetings,
everyone, and welcome to the next part of my China Study Abroad series! The next few blogs will be based upon our
class trip to Macau and Guangzhou to look at some of the most recent urban
development projects in mainland China.
To start
off the trip, we toured the Venetian Macao (shown left), a casino and hotel
built in 2007 and based upon the Italian renaissance style of architecture commonly
associated with cities like Venice. While
it is modeled after its sister hotel, the Venetian Las Vegas, the Venetian
Macao is considerably larger; standing at 980,000 m2, the Venetian
is the largest casino and seventh-largest building in the world. [1]
Naturally, it takes a lot of back-of-the-house work to make this place
run smoothly, and our class was privileged to get a behind-the-scenes tour of
this massive complex. We went through the
luggage sorting center, the kitchens, uniform storage, and the huge mechanical
spaces just to name a few of the areas we went through. I was most impressed by the practices of how
the facilities were run, especially considering I spent last summer as an
intern in the Facilities Management Office for Penn State’s Office of Physical
Plant (the construction and maintenance division of Penn State’s staff). For this blog, I’ll be talking about how
similar these practices are to the practices on a construction site.
Firstly,
take the luggage sorting center. This is
where visitors’ baggage goes after they drop it off to be put on trolleys and
sent to their rooms. Like at a
construction site, this requires planning and coordination to make sure the
process runs smoothly. For example, I found
pinned up on the wall the Action Plan for monitoring the system (shown below)
similar to a Schedule of Activities for construction work.
There was even a chart showing the average completion
times, lead time and complaints for month and year (shown below) similar to the
project time tracker and safety record.
The second place I noticed similarities was
the kitchen. For both construction and
cooking, teamwork is essential. Both
site workers and cooks, like the ones shown at right, need to work together to
deliver quality goods. Furthermore, cooks
need to follow recipes, like the one at left, in order to create what the
customer wants, just like how construction workers need to follow blueprints to
make the building the client wants.
Lastly,
there’s th- BACON!!!
Sorry, I got distracted for a bit. Where was I… ah, yes, of course. Lastly, there’s the Uniform Storage area. In the Venetian, there is a strict dress code
for dealers working in the casino pits, as shown on the poster at right. Similarly, construction workers have to
follow dress codes for things like safety vests and hard hats, albeit these
codes are for safety, not public appearance.
Another similarity is that both casino attendants and construction
laborers often store their uniforms in on-site facilities. However, the facilities at the Venetian
(shown below) are certainly much bigger and better maintained than the facilities
at a construction job site.
So that’s my take on the tour of the Venetian. Later I’ll be talking about the tour through
the historic areas of Macau and some of the sites there. Until then, thanks for reading and I hope to
see you back again.
Source:
- Las Vegas Sands Corp. Press Release for August 27, 2007. “The Venetian Macao, Asia’s First Las Vegas-Style Integrated Mega-Resort, Opens Its Doors to the World.” Retrieved August 11, 2014. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=185629&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1045227&highlight=
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