Labor Coordination
The
recipe for DPW combines a team with diverse backgrounds and myriad
personalities, time-sensitive projects, and a remote environment
in extreme living conditions with long work days of strenuous labor.
All you need to add to make it work are efficiency and organization.
Adding the role of Volunteer/Labor Coordinator to the DPW staff
provided just that addition to the DPW recipe. Effective use of
project management tools, prior correspondence with the volunteers
and crew, and better tracking/managing of daily job lists were
all factors in building a successful DPW team for 2002.
Every year, DPW hosts work weekends to encourage first-timers
to come up and work on Black Rock Station and the work ranch. This
experience gives them an idea of what they'll be signing up for
should they choose to volunteer and whether they can hack it. The
Coordinator sent out notices of the weekends and kept a record
of the people who came up and worked. This information helped in
picking the crew and volunteers for the 2002 event, something new
for DPW.
In 2002, DPW set a maximum limit for the number of workers it
would accept for two-month jobs during August and September. Almost
every
person on the 2002 DPW team had notified the Coordinator of their
schedule and skills beforehand. The Volunteer/Labor Coordinator
worked with the project managers to coordinate project timelines
with crew and volunteers' availability and skills. DPW peaked at
close to 250 workers in 2001, while this year’s trimmed-down
crew peaked at 150 workers. Even though DPW had fewer workers this
year, the project managers were more relaxed and comfortable with
their crew members’ skills resulting in better productivity
for everybody, Projects were completed on time, and the teams worked
like well-oiled machines. The clean-up crew even finished a couple
of days ahead of schedule, but not for lack of MOOP on the playa.
In
previous years, people could work for DPW simply by showing
up unannounced, at any time. This practice made tracking people
for work, food, and transportation a difficult task. Effectively
getting the word out about changes was a tricky process. Not
everybody has access to a computer, which added difficulty to the
job of
notifying a lot of people about the cutbacks within DPW. E-mails,
word-of-mouth, and work practices this year definitely communicated
the message that DPW was setting a new precedent. Next year will
bring an even trimmer DPW team with work contracts for the members.
This means that communication about working for DPW in 2003 will
need to start in the spring.
Submitted by,
Playground
DPW Labor/Volunteer Coordinator
Burning Man
Click here to read the 2001 DPW operations report 