Back to Facility Manager
Contents
Back to Home |
 
By Mischa de Brujin
Before Henk Markerink took up the position of general manager of the
Amsterdam Arena, he would usually move on from a job after three or four
years to look for new challenges.
“I’ve always been very eager to learn,” he explains. But now he has been at
the top of the organization of the largest stadium in the Netherlands for 15
years. It’s clear that he enjoys running this facility in the southern part
of the Dutch capital, and that he not only still finds it challenging, but
that his sphere of influence is such that his leadership skills now play out
on a worldwide stage.
Markerink, 51, sits in his office overlooking
the square in front of the stadium, a venue that he helped orchestrate to
fruition after a nasty political struggle. He ponders, and then lists
several reasons why he thinks his job is so interesting and his influence so
far-reaching. In summation, he manages his employees at the arena the way he
managed architects and engineers earlier in his career.
“They are all professionals,” he says. “You can’t handle professionals
|
Leading The New Wave
In Europe
Henk Markerink has
demonstrated numerous leadership skills in his career that will serve
him well as he works with his colleagues and peers in helping grow the
IAAM European contingent of public assembly facility managers. He took
time to speak to those very subjects.
What
are some of the unique needs and challenges of European venues that the
new District 8 can help address?
There is a lot happening in
Europe concerning venues. In the former East bloc states an enormous
wave of new venues (arenas and football stadiums) are being built.
In the other European countries, there is a constant flow of new stadium
projects on the rolls. Here we see mainly a process of renovation of old
football stadiums into modern venues including the redevelopment of the
areas around the stadiums.
In all the above projects the initiators are looking for knowledge and
expertise to be able to make the right decisions. IAAM and District 8
can be a very important network platform for all these initiators to get
their information and inspiration from. This required knowledge concerns
state-of-the-art technology, but also information about how to manage a
modern venue.
At the same time, there is an enormous shortage of skilled/ experienced
venue managers. Here lies an important task for the IAAM school in
Europe to educate the future management.
In
what area do you consider your leadership skills to be the greatest?
I am a typical general
manager. I know about all the expert fields of the company, up to
certain details. I see it as my duty to make the connections between
these different fields in order to make our company one. If necessary, I
even enter into detail on an expert field to come up with ideas and
trying to trigger the organisation to be eager to innovate and improve
all the time.
Because this is what makes us leading in the business: the ability to
change (to improve) with the requirements of our visitors, making use of
the newest methods and technologies that are available.
In this process I believe my role as a leader is in showing my
management team and the other personnel the way to our future, if
necessary by generating new ideas myself.
For example, we are developing a plan for a major investment in the VIP
section of our stadium.We will increase the space, the quality and the
service.A big part of the conceptual design, I have designed myself,
because I am convinced that we know our business best ourselves.The
plans will be worked out by our architect and consultants. |
hierarchically. We are a flat organization
with about 50 people. I like to delegate a lot. It’s important that people
can develop themselves.”
While Markerink has led many operational endeavors at his facility that have
called for split-second decision-making, today he finds himself more
involved on a global leadership level as IAAM-Europe prepares for its first
District 8 meeting in Vienna, Austria from April 19-21.
Markerink is a member of the steering committee that will help find new
members and establish the first board. District 8 was formed to help meet
the unique challenges and issues faced by European facility managers, and
Markerink is eager to work with IAAM in growing the new District.
“I believe that IAAM can fulfill an important role in Europe,” he says.
“There are some organizations for facilities here, but none of them combine
so many different venues – small scale and larger – like the IAAM does in
the United States. I think it’s useful to have them all under one umbrella,
because 70 percent of the issues we are all dealing with are alike.”
Love What You Do
Markerink’s effectiveness as a leader is actually based on the fact that for
the first time in his career, the building he works in actually is his work.
“It has made me become extra involved in my job,” he says.
And what an impressive structure it is: 246 feet high, room for 52,000
spectators and a very peculiar look. According to some people it resembles a
UFO.
“When I’m on the highway driving to work, I can see it from a distance,”
Markerink says. He lives in a town bordering Schiphol, Amsterdam’s airport.
As impressed as he still is seeing a jumbo jet, the Amsterdam Arena holds
even more allure for him. “It never bores me,” he says.
From the highway, he can also establish if the gigantic roof is open or
closed. Sometimes, as he’s driving home and the weather forecast on the
radio is predicting heavy showers for the night, he calls the facility
department of the arena, just to remind: “Don’t forget to close the roof.”
Markerink realizes that in global terms the word “arena” is a bit of a
confusing name for his facility. “Usually the word is used to describe a
smaller venue,” he says. “But the thought is it would express that it’s more
than a soccer stadium alone.”
Besides a place where more than 50,000 soccer fans gather to cheer their
team every two weeks, you can regularly hear the voices of world-famous
artists like Simon & Garfunkel, U2, the Rolling Stones and Robbie Williams,
or the booming base-tones of a mega dance party like Sensations White (where
every participant dresses in white) between the stands with the colored
chairs. Also a couple of times a year, the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe
play the Arena.
The Amsterdam Arena is foremost the home field of soccer club Ajax, a club
with a great history, well known in Europe for its “attacking” style of
playing, and a club that produced one of the best soccer players of all
time, Johan Cruijff (when a Dutchman reveals his nationality to a cab driver
in, say, Kenya, or any other soccer-minded nation anywhere in the world,
there is a good chance the cabby will enthusiastically call out, “Ah,
Cruijff!”).
Markerink is a supporter of Ajax as well, and not only because Ajax
represents 65 percent of the facility’s business. “It’s like a
brother-sister relationship,” he says. “Especially when you know a lot of
the players, when you know the coach, you feel like you are all part of a
family.”
Markerink has been a soccer fan all his life. He played soccer from the age
of six until he turned 18. In high school he also played tennis and
volleyball (he even made it to the national team in volleyball that played
in an Olympic Games for students called the Universiade). While in military
service, Markerink represented the Netherlands on the army volleyball team.
After that, he played on the highest level, the Dutch premier league, for
eight more years.
Having played sports on a top level was very helpful for Markerink’s career
as he grew into a stronger leader, he says. “You learn to deliver under
pressure. You have to know how to score when it’s crucial. And you learn how
to play on a team as well.” This philosophy is what drives Markerink’s
success in business.
Overcoming Political Obstacles
Markerink, who was born and raised in Aalden, a village in the eastern part
of the Netherlands, comes from a family that has been in construction for
150 years. His father was an architect. As a kid, Markerink visited many
construction sites. So it comes as no surprise that he too had an interest
in construction. He studied structural engineering at the University of
Eindhoven.
His first job was at a consultancy firm in Friesland, the most northern
province of Holland. In 1987, he moved to Hoofddorp, his current residence.
There he became employed at Arcadis, a large and well known company that has
many high profile accounts in infrastructural projects.
During his career, he moved more and more from engineering to management,
and at Twynstra Gudde he became involved in large projects as a project
manager. Markerink was in charge of an expansion plan for the flower auction
building in Aalsmeer (a distinctive place in the Netherlands where the
famous tulips are exported to the rest of the world). He was also involved
as a consultant in the construction of a new subway line in Amsterdam, a
costly project that required top-level engineering because of the soft, wet
grounds in the country that makes it very hard to build solid tunnels.
In 1991, Twynstra Gudde got another interesting account: the construction of
a new stadium for the soccer club Ajax and the city of Amsterdam. The
stadium was a hot issue in the media and in local politics because members
of the city council feared that it would be difficult to control the costs
of the project. In the offices of Twynstra Gudde the board asked who was
interested in taking up this challenging task. Markerink was. “A stadium is
more fun than building a factory hall,” he says.
The project proved to be difficult in many ways. First, there was the
problem of a neighbouring municipality objecting that the stadium was going
to be built partially on its grounds. The solution, moving the stadium to a
place that was completely within the borders of the city of Amsterdam,
brought new difficulties: the only possibility was building the arena above
a road. A parking garage with 2,500 slots was included in the construction
plan to make it financially feasible.
Looking back, Markerink says: “Building a stadium above a road was unique,
still is. Because we did this, we can deliver a huge service to our
customers. They can drive up to the parking garage under the stadium and go
to their seats, without being exposed to rain and wind.”
Of course, rain and wind are not factors in the retractable-roof facility.
While many facilities today are built with retractable roofs, at the time
the Amsterdam Arena was constructed it was a unique feature. Although very
comfortable for spectators and players, it was also the cause of an enormous
problem that haunted the director of the arena for many years and today
remains an operational task for those who manage many retractable venues:
grass does not grow in this place, because of a shortage of sunlight and
wind, details that were not foreseen in the calculations made at the drawing
board. And grass is needed to play soccer.
In 1995, Markerink parted with Twynstra Gudde to become part of a two-person
management team of the arena (since 2000 he has been the only director of
the arena). The grass was a nightmare to them from day one. “I had literally
sleepless nights,” he says. Imagine Markerink looking at the field, two
weeks before the opening match, only to see some solitary green blades
sprouting out of the mud.
The only option was to bring in a thin layer of grass sod quickly. In the
opening match between Ajax and AC Milan, sod would fly into the air each
time a player struck the ball, Markerink recalls.
 Dealing
with this problem required leadership. Markerink describes the situation:
“It was a war, and in a war you have to lead the troops.” All sorts of
experts visited the arena, and they all said something different. Someone
had to call the shots. The manager made a big decision: he judged it was of
no use to try all kinds of computerized ventilation and feeding systems any
longer, or to experiment with a field that consists of compartments of grass
that could be transported out of the stadium. The solution Markerink ordered
was that of every six months or so, the field in the stadium would be
replaced by a new one by transporting mats of grass, grown in different
parts of the Netherlands by specialized companies, to the Arena and laying
them out like a puzzle.
Born out of a difficult situation, this grass system, specially developed
for the arena, has emerged as an innovation that is very useful in the
soccer world. “They use this system now in Hamburg, Dortmund, and
Manchester,” says Markerink. “The Portuguese soccer club Porto came to us
once right before an important match in the Champions League (a prestigious
inter-European competition). They had a new stadium with a field that was in
a terrible state. On our advice, they used our system. They were very glad
we helped them out.”
Because the Arena combined a couple of innovations, other facilities showed
a lot of interest in how things in Amsterdam were done. That led to the
establishment of a consultancy department of the Amsterdam Arena called
Amsterdam Advisory, which helps out the management of primarily newer
stadiums.
As for his facility, Markerink plans on keeping it a cutting edge venue by
introducing several improvements, including building escalators to the
second ring of the stadium. “We have an aging population,” he says. “For
elderly people it is hard to climb all the way up there.” Another
improvement calls for improving the acoustics for concerts. “We are placing
large sound absorbing panels under the roof to bring back the echo-effect.”
The VIP section of the stadium will also be expanded. “We want to give it an
even more ‘quality’ feeling.” So there is still plenty for Markerink to do.
Whether it is guiding his own staff, sharing with his European colleagues
through IAAM-Europe or just driving by his facility on the way home from
work, Markerink knows much work remains to be done and that his proven
leadership skills are up to meeting any challenge.
And as long as he works at a facility where the venue is his actual job,
expect that work to be accomplished in a most passionate manner.
|
|
