With major international sporting events,
their reputation precedes them. Witness the highly publicized delays of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil; the budget overrun of the 2012 Olympics in London, England; or the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, whose US$4.1 billion price tag was more than 15 times higher than the original budget.
When the 2014 Commonwealth Games kick off this month in Glasgow, Scotland, project sponsors can boast an event that stayed on time and within the £524 million budget set by the organizing committee five years ago. To pull off the biggest multisport initiative Scotland has ever seen—with 70 countries participating in 17 events—the project team had to make smart, strategic decisions about which sporting venues it needed to build and which it could reuse.
The Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls Centre had to be upgraded to international standards before the Games.
Improvements to Hampden Park will leave a positive legacy long after the Games conclude, one of the goals of the project. To transform the venue—which normally hosts football games, as in the photo below—into a track and field stadium meeting international standards, the playing surface was raised 1.9 meters (6.2 feet).
IMAGES COURTESY OF GLASGOW 2014
RECLAMATION ACTS
The project journey leading to the Opening Ceremony on 23 July began over a decade ago. When the process started in 2002, the Glasgow Commonwealth team knew it would have to secure buy-in, primarily by assuring public stakeholders it would avoid a vast budget overrun.
“If we didn't have the support, there wouldn't have been justification for going ahead,” says Ian McKenzie, head of venue and village development and integration, Glasgow 2014, Glasgow, Scotland.
During the planning phase, the Glasgow project team determined it could both achieve buy-in and limit its spending—in effect, by recycling. It found that Glasgow wouldn't have to build entirely new venues for the Games; it already had most of them. In fact, the city had 70 percent of the venues that would be used for the Games, while 20 percent had already been planned.
The Glasgow project would abide by an overarching principle: Whatever was done for the Games would also have to be done for the long-term good of the people of Scotland. To that end, even the 10 percent of venues to be built specifically for the Games would have to serve more than this one major sporting event. They would have to demonstrate a positive legacy—sustainably bolstering the Scottish people's economy, health and culture.
We looked at not just what we need for the Games, but is that sustainable in a city like Glasgow, in a country like Scotland.”
—Ian McKenzie, Glasgow 2014, Glasgow, Scotland
“We looked at not just what we need for the Games, but is that sustainable in a city like Glasgow, in a country like Scotland. It's a great city, but it has a relatively small population,” Mr. McKenzie says. “Every decision had important long-term implications.”
As part of the Games' long-range benefits, the team proposed transportation infrastructure improvements, including extensions of highways and refurbishments of railways. This would not only provide better transportation for the Games, but also ease traffic and contribute to the larger regeneration of the east side of the city.
In 2006, during the planning phase, Glasgow project team members traveled to Melbourne, Australia, which hosted the Games that year. The Scottish team members consulted with their Australian counterparts to glean lessons learned—such as keeping foremost in mind the primacy of an unmovable deadline.
“That information was certainly a key part of helping inform the decisions and putting a roadmap ahead of us about what we needed to do at different stages and where we should be at certain times,” Mr. McKenzie says. “A generic roadmap's helpful, but you have to apply that to the city, circumstances and environment you work in, and then adapt to achieve things that are appropriate for your Games rather than copying what was done in the previous Games in a different culture.”
The Glasgow team found that out firsthand in 2007, when Scotland's largest city beat out Abuja, Nigeria to host the 20th Commonwealth Games. The project transitioned from planning to execution—and the team had to turn its proposal into a reality.
“We have one 10-million-gallon [37.9-millionliter] international standard competition pool in Glasgow, so that's where the aquatics and swimming were scheduled.”
—Ian McKenzie
Celtic Park is next to the Athletes' Village, making it convenient for competitors.
The Tollcross International Swimming Centre was expanded with a new 50-meter warm-up and training pool.
THRIFT SHOPPING
Budgeting decisions faced intense pressure given the public funding that poured into the Games: 67 percent of the budget came from the Scottish government, 15 percent from the Glasgow City Council and the rest from commercial income to be generated by Glasgow 2014, the organizing committee.
“There are lots of challenges when you're developing a major product that uses large sums of public funds,” Mr. McKenzie says. “You have to know that you're in recession times and that budgets are challenging. You have to use those funds effectively.”
The effective use of funds meant the effective selection of venues. According to Commonwealth Games Federation guidelines, a track and field stadium must accommodate 40,000 spectators—something Glasgow did not have. Building a new stadium, however, did not fit within the budget.
But Glasgow did have three major football stadiums with capacities that meet the Games' standards. Recognizing that one of those stadiums could be converted into an arena for track and field, the project team identified the most suitable candidate: Hampden Park, which hosts the Scottish national football team, among other clubs and events.
Glasgow had to build the Athletes' Village, but it will be reused as apartments after the Games.
If the Games did use Hampden Park, however, the stadium would be out of commission for a year, and the teams that regularly play there would have to find other venues. To secure its use, the project team negotiated with the stadium's owners.
“In the end, after long negotiations, we managed to come to an agreement that Hampden would be kept out of commission for a year to allow us to develop the track, stage the Games and take the track out again afterward,” Mr. McKenzie says. “Now that is still, in economic terms, much better than building a brand-new stadium that we didn't need other than for the Games.”
To convert the stadium, the project team raised its surface by 1.9 meters (6.2 feet) and removed eight rows of seats to create more space for the competitions. Glasgow ended up with an international-standard athletics stadium for £14 million—a fraction of what a new stadium would require.
When scouting venues, the project team considered all of the city's existing structures—not just its sporting arenas. The team looked at the spatial requirements and the Federation's recommended number of spectators for each sport. If facilities met Federation guidelines, the team considered them as potential venues.
“Some of them were fairly obvious,” Mr. McKenzie says. “We have one 10-million-gallon [37.9-million-liter] international standard competition pool in Glasgow, so that's where the aquatics and swimming were scheduled.”
While the team decided the Tollcross International Swimming Centre would suitably host the aquatics and swimming events, the venue doesn't have an Olympic-standard diving area, so it couldn't host the diving competitions. The project team considered whether to construct a permanent or temporary diving facility or find another site. Again, the team had to answer the question, Will new construction benefit Glasgow after the Games had gone?
The Emirates Arena, which will host the badminton competition, and the Glasgow National Hockey Centre, below, are two of three venues finished a year ahead of schedule.
Ticket Troubles
Crushing demand prompts an IT shutdown—and hasty repair—for the Commonwealth Games ticketing site.
Some fans called it a glitch; others called it a debacle. When additional tickets went on sale in May for the Commonwealth Games events, “unprecedented demand” surged so high that the online system sputtered.
Roughly 100,000 more tickets were made available this year, following last year's initial sale when approximately 2.3 million customers competed in a lottery for 1 million tickets. Yet many of this year's avid fans were met with long delays and transaction errors.
The tech glitches sparked a wave of customer complaints, and ticket sales were temporarily suspended. A second day of user problems—and complaints—prompted Glasgow 2014 to suspend sales again until the IT issues could be fully resolved.
The tech team sprang into action, investigating the root problems and running tests to find and fix pain points caused by high demand. When the site went live more than a week later, the team took a new tack: a phased approach with 50,000 tickets released in batches over three days. It also devised more robust stakeholder support, including free postage on new orders and a ticketing hotline for questions or concerns.
“There are lots of challenges when you're developing a major product that uses large sums of public funds. You have to use those funds effectively.”
—Ian McKenzie
“Of course, funding and being economical is important, but there are also social aspects to consider,” Mr. McKenzie says. Instead of devoting funds to a new diving facility, the project team decided to host the diving events at a facility in Edinburgh, 45 miles (72 kilometers) away.
BREAKING GROUND
In other instances, however, the team found that the best course of action meant building new structures—especially if they could drive revenue and social value back into the city.
The Athletes' Village would need to house some 6,500 athletes and officials in 700 homes and apartments. Preparatory site work on the village began in August 2009. To achieve the Games' sustainability goals, the project team built a nearby eco-friendly energy center that will deliver hot water to the village while reducing waste and lowering carbon emissions by at least 60 percent. After the Games, the low-carbon village, part of a larger regeneration effort for the city's east side, will be converted into housing for the general public: 304 private homes, 300 rented houses and a 120-bed care home.
The newly built SSE Hydro arena will host the gymnastics events—but it, too, will have a post-Games life. The venue, which opened in September, has already hosted concerts and entertainment events. With its futuristic design and a capacity of around 12,000, the arena will help make Glasgow attractive for future cultural events, Mr. McKenzie says—an essential part of the Games' long-term strategic goals of positioning Glasgow as a global cultural player.
By strategically determining which existing facilities could be repurposed, the Glasgow team could devote resources to the facilities it had to build from scratch. As a result, three new major facilities—the Commonwealth Arena, the Emirates Arena and the Glasgow National Hockey Centre—all finished a year ahead of schedule.
“You always want the project to be better,” Mr. McKenzie says. “At the same time, you have a limited amount of money.” PM