(US and Canada) Paul Foster, Founder, CEO and Board Member of OnePlan, speaks with Andy Park, VP and Co-founder of TeamCentral, in a video interview about leveraging 3D digital twins for larger-scale event planning, planning the Olympics, and managing the product roadmap.

Foster begins by explaining that OnePlan leverages 3D digital twins to help customers virtually walk around and check out event venues. He reveals that he has worked on six Olympic Games with the upcoming Paris Olympics being his sixth. Oneplan can do things like simulating the sun’s position to understand how it will impact athletes or the broadcast cameras, more realistically than actually visiting the venue.

Sharing his experience from the London Olympics 2012, Foster says that his company helped oversee the people movement planning for the Olympic Park and planning for things like human resources, signage, wayfinding, bins, cabins, and barriers.

He explains that planning for such events is mostly done via tools like PowerPoint but it disconnects the various facets and stakeholders from each other. OnePlan enables planning together in real-time, even for events like weddings, vaccine sites, and the Olympic or Paralympic games.

When asked about the factors that have contributed most to success so far, Foster mentions the team’s deep understanding of the customer needs. The company realized the true value of its solutions after getting use cases outside of events, like planning vaccine sites and polling stations. OnePlan is now looking at using its data from over 25,000 events planned in 110 countries to make events safer and more efficient.

Speaking of customer engagement, Foster says that prospects can start planning on the system for free and that the platform has a big focus on making it as easy as possible for people to use and get on board. He also mentions that some clients need more advanced functionality like putting restrictive security provisions, correct permission structures, and appropriate sharing of data. Shedding light on another use case, he reveals that customers are using the venue twin models to also sell hospitality and advertising space.

Foster predicts more willingness from organizers to adopt 3D event planning and use augmented reality. He adds that OnePlan is looking to visualize data from various partners in a better way to understand things like people movements for planning the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics 2024.

CDO Magazine appreciates Paul Foster for sharing his insights and data success stories with our global community.