ROPES CHALLENGE COURSE PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

Design and installation of a challenge course represent a very small portion of the total cost of developing and maintaining a successful challenge course program. Too often programs fall prey to the “build it and they will come” mentality and find themselves saddled with what turns out to be an expensive white elephant. The costs for liability insurance, program management, client management, staff training and development, marketing, and daily operations are often overlooked while everything is put into meeting the initials costs of course construction. We can help you avoid this all-too-common trap by providing program consulting and business plan development up front.

Strategic Planning & Program Development

Before you set forth on a quest to build a successful challenge course program, it is vital that you know where you are headed and how your challenge course will fit into your larger business plan. We will work with you to help define your goals and develop a plan to achieve them. Through goal setting, action planning, and ongoing coaching, we can help you to draw up a detailed road map and ensure that your program stays on track.

Curriculum Design and Development

Adventure challenge programming can be designed and facilitated to achieve a number of outcomes, from the purely recreational to the intensely educational. How you choose to use your course will help define the value of your program and differentiate you from your competition. We have considerable experience working with schools, community agencies, and corporations. We can help you design and develop a curriculum that delivers the quality of programming you aspire to. We will help you to create custom operations manuals, facilitators guides, and informational materials for your prospective clientele.

Curricular materials may include:

Program delivery guides and literature
Facilitator guides & Instructional and technical manuals

Management Tools and Operations Materials

In response to a desire to raise operations and management standards across the industry, the most recent edition (sixth edition) of the Association for Challenge Course Technology Challenge Course Standards has been amended to include standards on program operations and management. The creation and upkeep of course and equipment logs, staff development and training files, instructor and facilitator competency models, and assessment forms can be laborious. We can assist you in developing systems and procedures for streamlining your course management practices, including the following.

Booking and client management systems

Staff scheduling systems
Organizational communication tools and databases including intranets
Course and equipment maintenance logs
Instructor and facilitator competency models
Instructor and facilitator skills review and assessment forms

Marketing & Web Design

S.T.E.P.S. brings to the table skilled graphic and web designers who can help convey the value of your program to your prospective clientele. So often programs fail to realize their true potential because they fail to reach their ideal clients and convey the value of what they have to offer. Because of budget constraints, many outdoor programs choose to create publications and marketing materials in-house. The result is often hours of learning new computer applications, outlays for expensive software, high printing costs, and in the end a result that fails to do the job. If you would like to save on these costs and at the same time produce more professional and effective presentational materials, we can help you with flexible design templates and forms With years of experience in the field we can help you to put your program across. Specifically we can offer you the following services:

Marketing plan development and consultation
Web design including extranets, intranets, and content management systems
Print materials development and production
Computer-based applications
Template design systems and staff training