In this article, we will present an excerpt from the second half of our interview with Christian García, founder and CEO of Westplay.
Do you have any particular visions for West Play’s future?
That’s a good question. West Play has the vision to create enhance spaces for families. Even though we’re focused mostly on the player structures, we believe that we can create different family spaces now with this pandemic situation. Many families are at home, so we are working on a project to create recreation space inside the houses. So that’s our new vision. But we believe that Westplay tries to always create spaces for families to have fun.
Can you give me a beginner’s basic overview of the playground creation process?
Absolutely. There are so many things in a playground, believe it or not. We use a lot of planning involved, and we have created a nice and comprehensive methodology to help our customers understand what they need and what they are capable of doing based on different things. But for instance, this is a big topic.
I guess we’ll take some questions that come to my mind right now is like, for instance, being used to understand the playground. The playgrounds are based on three different age groups; so you’ve got a small playground for kids from two to five years old, and you have the second one from five to 12 years old, and then you have a structure that goes from two to 12 years old, it is a combination of both. So, I guess that’s the first question you have to ask when you are trying to get a playground, so you know what age groups will be using this playground as the first one. Then, the second one will be, I guess, in accordance with the first one, how many kids, how many children you need to accommodate in this structure which will give you an idea of the size of the project.
Then, it is essential to know the location, the site area. Absolutely. That’s a very important thing. The playground industry, though, I have to say is governed by the Canadian Standards Association and different norms that govern the industry. We need to understand the area in the spaces and where we want to set up the playground based on these norms, on these standards, so that goes to school. Another important thing, of course, for the playground is to know that it’s a capital project. But I mean it’s going to be an investment for the next 20, 25 years.
So it is a lot of planning, and it has to be very thoughtful, creative the whole thing. So you can assure that investment ideas will last for a long time, will be so much happiness for the community. So it’s important to say the budget is important to see you got the funds to create your playground because, you know, you can start dreaming and you start adding more play structures or independent components to the playground.
But then you’re getting out of the budget. You don’t have more spaces or at least a lot of planning there. And then I would say the last thing in the planning will also be the protecting surfacing for the structure because it’s not only the structure itself when the kids will play, but we need to make our playground safe. And it is essential to understand the different kinds of protecting surfacing that we have available in the market. Our team of West Play has managed to pool and offer the best quality, lasting products. And we have set up a nice system where we help our customers to understand their needs, including in the process of developing the dream playground.
I would not have even thought of the first things being ages and number of children, though once you say it, of course, it’s obvious, that would not have occurred to me absolutely right…
And you are right. Some customers need a playground they don’t know how to focus on. I guess that has to be also with the community’s demographic like there is a lot of new development; and, none of these new families, and they got small kids, so it makes sense to have a small playground just for the kids to start playing, I’m sure.
Podcast (full interview)
You can listen to the full interview in the following podcast:
What do you think about this topic? Have you had any experience in a playground?
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