787 Rollout: A year in the making

Published 12:05 pm Monday, July 9, 2007

You don’t pull off an event like yesterday’s 787 rollout without a little planning.

Or lots of it, if you’re a Boeing Co. communications person.

Yvonne Leach, who heads up 787 communications, says her team members began discussing the event more than a year ago in June 2006. More frequent planning meetings began in January. About 100 people were involved in the rollout planning.

For the Dreamliner rollout, approximately 250 workers volunteered to staff the event, doing everything from handing out water to ushering people to their seats.

Boeing additionally enlisted the help of 55 public relations officers to deal with the media (they capped media attendance to about 250 for Sunday’s event).

And VIPs required the assistance of another 40 Boeing workers.