A smoking printer threatening to start a fire, or total darkness with no IT activity due to a sudden power outage. At the Volvo Ocean Race village, unpredictable problems can turn up at any time. The role for the Volvo IT crew is to be prepared for the unpredictable and ensure that everything runs smoothly. The race is totally dependent on its IT platform.
At each of the eleven different stop-overs the race visits, there is a committed Mission IT team that sometimes has as little as two days to set up an office environment. Rigorous planning and preparations are essential to anticipate risks and challenges. The nine-month assignment is taking the crew of Volvo IT employees around the world in 240 days and there is no room for mistakes.
"Nowadays, the race is 100% based on an IT platform and it’s all about being reliable. I guess that IT is one of those unfortunate things in this world that everybody expects to work and nobody says anything when it does, but they certainly do if something fails. What I think Volvo IT brings to the table is its understanding of the event and the quality of its work" says Knut Frostad, CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race.
"It’s a little like a rock ‘n’ roll tour. We build, deliver, take apart, transport… and then we start all over again" says Thierry Jouve, a member of the IT crew.
"As Volvo IT is a global company, we can add local crew members at each stop-over. This brings new energy to the team all the time and pushes the team to perform. The challenge is that the local crew has to be 100% operational within a few days and there is a steep learning curve when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of the IT environment" says Per Berlin, overall project manager.
"One day we received an alarm that a printer was smoking at the media centre. Taking it apart was not an easy job. Wearing forehead lights, we looked more like explorers at an excavation than IT engineers. We finally figured out that some capacitors were leaking. We decided to replace them and that fixed the problem” continues Thierry.
Volvo IT is responsible for all the hardware, software, communication and IT support for the race management team, officials and the media at the stop-overs. Volvo IT is also providing support at race headquarters in the UK, as well as being responsible for the official website. This is the second time Volvo IT has undertaken this assignment.
Link for images of the Mission IT crew >>
Link for images on Volvo Ocean Race >>