Operations that work on your busiest day.
Bluebird helps ski resorts, theme parks, stadiums, museums, and manufacturers find hidden capacity, right-size labor, and open new operations ready. Industrial engineering rigor from someone who did this work inside Disneyland and Vail Resorts, not just advised on it.
Ski resorts · Theme parks · Sporting venues · Museums · Food manufacturing · Airlines · Defense manufacturing · Hospitality & retail
What Bluebird does
Every engagement answers one question: how do we get more out of what you already have? These are the problems Bluebird is built to solve.
Capacity & throughput
Bottleneck and runtime analysis, time studies, and line or queue balancing to find out how much more your operation can do before you spend capital.
Master planning & capital strategy
Multi-site capacity master plans and capital project scoping, so investments land where they create the most throughput.
Guest flow & wayfinding
Arrival, queueing, movement, and egress. Guest-focused signage strategy and crowd flow design for stadiums, parks, resorts, and attractions.
Parking & arrival operations
Parking and traffic programs that move guests from the road to the gate faster, built on programs delivered across six mountain resorts.
Labor & staffing models
Demand-based staffing plans, labor standards, and scheduling programs that cut labor cost without cutting the guest experience.
Operational analytics
Performance metrics and dashboards that tell operators where to look, built to be used every day rather than filed away.
Opening readiness
Sizing and sequencing a new attraction, venue, or facility before it opens: operating procedures, training, and soft-opening test-and-adjust.
Strategic & enterprise project management
Leadership for the big cross-functional initiatives: scoping, sequencing, stakeholder alignment, and the follow-through that gets enterprise programs across the finish line.
Industries Bluebird knows from the inside
-
Ski Resorts
-
Theme Parks
-
Sporting Venues
-
Museums
-
Food Manufacturing
-
Airlines
-
Defense Manufacturing
-
Hospitality & Retail
Three steps, no mystery
Every engagement starts with a free 20-minute call. From there, Bluebird assesses your operation and builds a prioritized roadmap, and can stay on to help you deliver it. Here is how it works.
Step 1: Start with a call
A 20-minute conversation about what is not working and what good would look like. If Bluebird is not the right fit, you will hear that too.
Step 2: Walk the operation
On-site assessment: data review, time studies, and conversations with the people doing the work. Depending on the size of the organization, this can take a day or two, or a week or more. The front line usually knows where the problems are.
Step 3: Deliver a roadmap, then help execute
Prioritized initiatives with sized impact, plus hands-on project management to get them implemented instead of shelved.
Ready when you are
A first conversation is always free. Email derek@gobluebirdops.com, call 949.813.4260, or use the form at the bottom of this page.
Results you can take to your CFO
Bluebird is built to move the numbers that matter in your operation: throughput, labor cost, guest experience, and time to open. Below are a few examples of results from real projects.
$15M+
per year in labor savings driven across Vail Resorts' Mountain Division
36%
more shift output at a defense manufacturer, in five weeks
13%
better guest egress scores following a data-driven bottleneck reduction project for post-game egress flow
3.5h → 90m
duration of operational pre-opening checklists for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance attraction at Disneyland. Improvement project shaved 57% of the time needed to complete, saving labor hours and improving operational windows
Where the experience comes from
Consulting Work
A sample of consulting projects from the past year. Client names are withheld.
Defense manufacturer, capacity: Bottleneck and runtime analyses plus cross-functional project management at a Department of War weapons manufacturing facility. Within five weeks, shift output rose 36%, with a roadmap to a full 100% throughput improvement.
NFL stadium, guest egress: Worked with the stadium's analytics team to improve how fans exit after games. Led a signage review and built a digital signage package for 125 concourse screens that points guests to the right exits. Guest egress scores improved 13% after rollout.
Major ski resort, labor planning: Built a labor planning approach for the mountain operating teams, with a $1M per year savings roadmap and clearly defined initiatives.
New museum, opening support: Provided operational support for a brand-new museum in Nashville, TN through its final testing and opening, helping the team tune show timing and guest flow before and after the doors opened.
Vail Resorts
As the Vice President of Operational Insights for the Mountain Division at Vail Resorts, Derek led enterprise programs focused on deploying Workforce Management and Scheduling as well as standing up a data-driven operations support team.
Workforce Management initiatives helped to drive over $15M/yr in labor savings while providing front-line leaders tools and strategies to deliver these savings without impacting operations or guest service.
Built and deployed a new team supporting Mountain Operations across the enterprise with detailed lift performance metrics and dashboards. These tools were used to drive focused operational improvements and helped support decision making for major capital investments (lifts and gondolas).
Led another enterprise team and program focused on improving parking operations and reducing traffic at the most congested resorts. Designed and led implementation of new parking programs across six resorts with longstanding histories of traffic challenges with dramatic and measurable improvements at each location.
The Walt Disney Company
As a Project Manager and Senior Industrial Engineer at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA, Derek led initiatives as a strategic partner to senior VP level leaders across the park.
Identified gaps and opportunities in the morning checklist process for five major attractions drove improvements to completion at each one. All efforts drove time savings of at least 30 minutes per day (supporting labor savings). Biggest improvement was at the new Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride where Derek’s efforts helped the team reduce opening checklist timing from 3.5 hours down to 90 minutes each day.
Supported Masterplanning efforts with the Facilities & Operations Services team as they relocated to an offsite location due to park expansion activities. Helped with strategic programming outlining space needs and layout design for critical support teams that service the park every day.
Designed and launched a new Vendor Managed Inventory program for the Custodial team to improve their replenishment and ordering process for bathroom consumable supplies across the full resort. Frequency of purchase orders dropped by 98% each year and the project also drove a capital cost avoidance of $500k.
Mars Wrigley Confectionery
Led North American Master Planning process across five key manufacturing sites that drafted future facility layouts and capital plans for over $1B in future capital investments. This process required significant cross-functional coordination, leadership, and organization to drive pre-work and on-site event coordination.
Enabled future growth of the $500M+/yr TWIX® brand in North America by building five-year supply chain capacity and sourcing plans, scoping investments, writing capital project proposals, and by coordinating planning activities across Marketing, Sales, R&D, and Engineering teams.
Derek Egbert
Derek is an industrial engineer and operations strategist, and the founder of Bluebird Operations Solutions. Before Bluebird he was Vice President of Operational Insights for Vail Resorts' Mountain Division and a Project Manager and Senior Industrial Engineer at Disneyland Resort, with earlier manufacturing master planning work at Mars Wrigley.
He works best inside the operation: on the hill, in the concourse, on the floor, alongside the people who run it every day.
Based in Arvada, Colorado. Travels for on-site engagements. Connect on LinkedIn
Let's talk about your operation.
Tell me what is not working. Every message comes straight to me, and a first conversation is always free.
derek@gobluebirdops.com
949.813.4260
Arvada, Colorado