Brief description of the organization
The City of Kitchener is a lower-tier municipality in Ontario and part of the Region of Waterloo. Through its Economic Development department, including the Arts & Entertainment division, the City delivers programs and services that support community wellbeing, economic growth, and placemaking. This includes the planning and delivery of special events, stewardship of public spaces, and development of arts and creative industries initiatives.
Problem area
Event planning, resource allocation, public space management, and municipal decision-support systems
What is the central problem that students will explore?
The City of Kitchener receives a growing number of event proposals of varying scale, complexity, and alignment with municipal priorities. While an intake and evaluation framework exists, current processes rely in part on informal knowledge, relationships, and less formalized decision-making processes.
At the same time, the City’s event calendar is subject to increasing pressure from “signature” and “special” events. Event activity is highly concentrated within the peak season (May to October), where calendar availability, staffing capacity, and infrastructure are already constrained. These conditions can result in both calendar saturation during peak periods and underutilization (“dark days”) outside of them, highlighting the need for more deliberate scheduling and sequencing decisions.
The project will examine how a centralized intake and triage tool for new signature and special event opportunities can support clearer, more consistent, and data-informed decision-making. The goal is not to increase the number of events, but to improve how decisions are made – ensuring alignment with capacity, calendar realities, and Council priorities, while supporting the long-term sustainability of the events portfolio.
Additional Context
- Signature and Special Events are City produced or City supported events that occur within City-owned or supported spaces and require coordinated planning, permitting, and operational support from multiple City services.
- Signature Events are large-scale, high-impact events (typically 5,000+ attendees per day) that require extensive coordination, long lead times, and significant operational planning.
- Special Events are mid-scale events (typically 500–4,999 attendees per day) that still require structured planning and coordinated support, but with a more moderate operational footprint and level of complexity.
- These events vary in scale and complexity, but share common characteristics:
- They take place in civic or high-use public spaces (e.g., Downtown Kitchener, Victoria Park, Carl Zehr Square)
- They require structured planning, coordination, and municipal oversight
- They involve multiple stakeholders, including City divisions, organizers, and external partners
- They contribute to community experience, economic activity, and city identity
Main objectives
- Design a centralized event intake and triage tool for Signature and Special Events
- Translate key threshold conditions – capacity, calendar availability, and budget – into a structured decision-making framework
- Improve consistency, transparency, and defensibility in evaluating event proposals
- Develop an approach to optimize calendar utilization, including reducing “dark days” (i.e., where there are no events) and managing peak-period saturation
- Integrate Council-identified KPIs (e.g., attendance, experience, safety, economic impact, community identity) into evaluation and prioritization processes
- Support alignment between event intake decisions and broader economic development, place-making, and city-building objectives
Scope of work
- Literature Review and Jurisdictional Scan
- Review best practices in municipal event intake systems, decision-support tools, and scheduling optimization
- Analyze comparable municipalities and event-hosting models
- Current-State Analysis
- Map existing intake, triage, and scheduling workflows with City staff
- Identify gaps, inefficiencies, and areas of reliance on informal processes
- Framework and Tool Design
- Develop a standardized intake model, including intake forms, evaluation criteria, and triage pathways
- Build a structured decision framework incorporating:
- event category definitions (Signature vs Special)
- threshold conditions (capacity, calendar, budget)
- KPI-based evaluation lens
- Calendar Optimization Approach
- Analyze event distribution across the calendar, including peak saturation and underutilized periods
- Develop strategies to improve sequencing and reduce “dark days”
- Prototype Development (if feasible)
- Develop a conceptual or functional prototype (e.g., dashboard, intake tool, scoring model, or decision tree)
- Validation and Recommendations
- Test the framework using sample or historical event scenarios
- Provide implementation recommendations and an adoption roadmap
Deliverables
- A comprehensive final report outlining research findings, framework design, and recommendations
- A standardized event intake and triage model, including templates (e.g., Google form), scoring logic, and decision pathways
- A calendar optimization approach/strategy, potentially including visualization tools or scheduling models
- A prototype or mock-up tool (e.g., dashboard or intake interface)
- Supporting materials such as process maps, decision trees, and evaluation frameworks
- Final presentation to City staff and stakeholders
Team Meeting Frequency
Bi-weekly
Skills and Training Required
- Research and policy analysis
- Data analysis and interpretation
- Systems thinking and process design
- UX/design thinking (for tool/interface development)
- Stakeholder engagement and communication
- Presentation and report writing
Resources required
- UWaterloo resources needed (e.g., software, tools, equipment):
- Data analysis and visualization tools (e.g., Excel, Power BI or similar)
- Collaboration and process mapping tools (e.g., Miro or similar)
- Access to relevant academic research databases and literature
- Resources provided by your organization (e.g., datasets, test facilities):
- Special Events Action Plan and related City policy documents
- Sample or anonymized event intake and scheduling data
- Existing workflows and internal process documentation
- Access to staff subject matter experts (Special Events, Operations, etc.)
- Other required resources:
- Case studies or other process information from other municipalities
- Access to publicly available benchmarking data
- General research and analysis tools
NDA or a commercialization agreement for this project?
Yes