Success Story

Hockey, Rodeos, and Live Music: How The Ranch Manages 3,000 Annual Events with Brightly Software

Client

The Ranch, Larimer County’s Event Complex

Loveland, CO, United States

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Challenges

Vitals

Municipal-owned event center with:  

More than 240 acres of versatile indoor and outdoor space, including the Larimer County Fairgrounds with outdoor arena
Six buildings including a 4-H arena, 4-H classroom building with commercial kitchen, 32,000-square-foot exhibit hall, and concert hall
20 event operations staff members and 5 administrative staff

Results

Using Brightly’s Asset Essentials, The Ranch has been able to:  

Seamlessly make the switch from another system to gain more flexibility
Track the upkeep of an outsourced 6,800 seat venue
Forecast needed repairs and replacements to avoid down time during 3,000 annual events

Background

The Ranch, Larimer County’s Event Complex, located in northern Colorado, has a long history of serving the local community. Each August, The Ranch hosts about 140,000 people over five days for the Larimer County Fair. Throughout the year, the complex is home to 4-H events, competitions, and education. But The Ranch also draws crowds for concerts, semi-pro hockey games and music festivals, and has a reputation as one of the premier event and entertainment complexes in the region.

The Ranch used other CMMS and asset management software programs in the past, but leaders were unhappy with the results. In 2023, the maintenance and operations team switched to Brightly’s Asset Essentials because of its customization options.

“Asset Essentials allows you to push preventive maintenance tasks and adjust your schedule based on actual data,” says Chris Brodzinski, Procurement Specialist at The Ranch. “We’re running 3,000 events a year, so we need a maintenance schedule, but we also need to be able to adjust it based on which facilities are available. Asset Essentials allows that flexibility.”

Making the Switch

Brodzinski and two members of his team attended Brightly’s Illuminate conference in 2023 and while there, made the decision to purchase Asset Essentials. When they returned home, they leveraged Brightly experts to assist in setup and implementation.

“From day one, we had in-depth training. It wasn’t just getting training materials; it was phone calls and video meetings and multiple hours with multiple Brightly team members helping us build it and get it all set up right. Then there was constant follow-up, asking us how it’s going, what are our next steps, what else do we want from the system. We had multiple layers of support from various departments. If someone couldn’t help us figure something out, they would find someone else who could.”

The Ranch team returned to Illuminate in 2024 and left with expertise in Asset Essentials and a network of industry professionals across the country. “This time, we were able to ask the right questions, and we were able to sit down with experts and actually tweak the way we had set up our own system,” Brodzinski says. “In one week, I learned the entire system and developed a network of people I can call on anytime I have a question.”

Tracking Upkeep

Blue Arena at the Ranch Events Complex is a 6,800-seat multipurpose venue home to the Colorado Eagles, a semi-pro hockey team, that hosts sporting events, family shows, rodeos, concerts, and trade shows. While Larimer County owns Blue Arena, a third-party event manager is contracted to manage the building. “As the building owner, we want to be able to track the event manager’s work and keep track of how they are maintaining the building,” Brodzinski says.

Asset Essentials has provided an ideal way to keep track of the maintenance conducted at Blue Arena with just a few clicks. Brodzinski’s team set up the outsourced management team with their own Asset Essentials login, so the work can be kept separate from The Ranch’s main page but allows Brodzinski and his team access to review.

Forecasting Necessary Maintenance

In addition to Asset Essentials, The Ranch also purchased Brightly Predictor to help its team better plan for potential outages and forecast temperature fluctuations.

“If we have multiple repairs on one HVAC unit, we want to be able to catch that and implement that repair or replacement in advance, so we won’t have down time during an event. In our industry, it’s crucial to have the right temperature, whether we need to freeze an ice rink or make sure a classroom is the right temperature. For us, having a unit down is losing money.”