Former Wembley Director Noel Jeffs Appointed President of the UK Venue Managers Association

Noel Jeffs, the Stadium Director who oversaw the difficult transition from the old Wembley Stadium to the new Wembley Stadium, has been named the President of the UK Venue Managers Association.

Jeffs worked at Wembley from 1979 to 2007 and was the Stadium Director responsible for opening the new Wembley Stadium. UKVMA Director Neil Levett said: “We are delighted that Noel has been able to accept the role of President.

“The Association has been going from strength to strength since it was formed some 18 months ago, and is proving to be a valuable tool, not just in sharing information between members, but also networking within an industry that is one of the country’s growth sectors.”

Jeffs is delighted to be invited to be the President UKVMA and looks forward to being involved in establishing the association as a market leader and knowledge base to help continuously develop and improve industry standards and best practice.

During his first 15 years at Wembley Jeffs gained considerable experience working at Wembley Arena and Wembley Conference and Exhibition Centre as well as Wembley Stadium, but turned his attention solely to the growing stadium business in the early nineties. He was involved with the staging of world class sports and entertainment events for many years, culminating in the Euro ’96. In 1999 he became the Stadium Director responsible for the last event (England v Germany football in October 2000) at the old Wembley before going on to focus his attentions on the new stadium.

As Stadium Director and client representative for all operational and licensing aspects for  the new stadium, with his team, he attained the operating licences and opened it in 2007. After the opening, his team went on to stage the FA Cup Final and a number of international concerts including the Concert for Diana and Live Earth in what was a hectic first six months.

Jeffs established his own consultancy business in 2007, Stadium Advisory Services, providing design and operational advice to a number of international clients with various existing stadia and new build projects. In late 2011 he completed a two year assignment working for AEG Facilities opening and then running the new Turk Telekom Arena, Istanbul, Turkey, the home of Galatasaray Spor Kulubu for its first year.

Jeffs has been a part of the evolving stadia business for over thirty years and has influenced many changes to the way they operate, improving efficiency and functionality and in doing so has helped raised standards of crowd safety management and customer service on the projects that he has been involved with.

More recently Jeffs has teamed up with two industry experts to form Stadium Management Systems Ltd. The company is developing a unique, state of the art software application called Stadium Manager – “for stadium operators by stadium operators”. The system is suitable for all kinds of venue and uses tried and proven business processes to bring together all the work flows and knowledge base required to operate a stadium. Stadium Manager creates the environment to implement industry best practice, drive higher standard of customer service and crowd safety management, monitor compliance whilst reducing management risk and costs. The application is modelled using simple user interfaces, enhanced venue mapping, and drag and drop technology to provide immediate access to a range of elements including operational information, technical/asset management data, and risk assessments.

Pre-launch demos of the application have already received positive feedback from one of the football authorities, industry insurance broker’s and a number of stadia. Pre launch trials will be carried out at a high profile football club over the next few weeks and it is anticipated that the application will be fully available early in 2013.

The UK Venue Managers Association provides a platform for managers of multi-purpose venues, including major sports, music events conferences and exhibitions, to meet and discuss solutions to real and potential problems. It is also a forum for leading suppliers of products and services to the venue industry to regularly discuss, explain and demonstrate direct to influential end users, as well as through the UKVMA website.