From the Olympics to F1: How Project Teams are Making Events More Sustainable

Project teams behind the biggest events must manage stakeholders and resources to deliver thrilling experiences. But there’s a growing focus on sustainability—making sure events mitigate negative impacts on the planet. We discuss this with: 

Adriana Figueiredo, architect manager, Paris 2024 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Paris: Figueiredo explains how expectations for sustainability have increased since 2016 when she worked on the Rio Games. She also shares how she and her teams executed temporary infrastructure projects to help the Paris Games meet ambitious sustainability targets.

Danny Klima, PMP, PgMP, venue portfolio director, Ethara, Abu Dhabi: Klima discusses how sustainability has become a greater priority in the events and venue management sector, how he’s built buy-in for sustainability initiatives, and the projects his teams have delivered to make the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix a more climate-friendly race.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, then you understand the surge of energy and emotion that’s unleashed when thousands of people gather at a major event.

From athletes racing around a track … 

To musicians filling stadiums with sound …

To drivers pushing the limits of speed. 

But these spectacles wouldn’t be possible without project teams working behind the scenes—managing stakeholders and resources with the world watching. And now project leaders for these extravaganzas increasingly must address a new expectation—making sure their events mitigate any negative impact on the planet and its people. So let’s move on to today’s main attraction: how project professionals are helping major events across the globe achieve new levels of sustainability.

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified^®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics are chasing an ambitious prize: to host the most sustainable Games yet. That includes cutting by half its carbon footprint compared to previous Games, something the Paris team is aiming to achieve through a range of strategies—everything from making more room for bikes to temporarily floating solar panels on the Seine to repurposing existing buildings whenever possible, rather than building new ones.

The Olympics are just one example of how major event organizers are looking to elevate sustainability. Everything from signature sporting events to massive music festivals are looking to raise the bar. And if you’re looking to up your sustainability game, go to PMI.org/podcast and click on the transcript for this episode for some helpful resources.

Today we’ll speak with two project leaders—one from the Paris Olympics and another from the team behind the Formula 1 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. First is Adriana Figueiredo, an architect manager for the Paris 2024 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. She’s an Olympic venue veteran who has spent the past two years helping lead the effort to minimize the carbon impact of the temporary infrastructure required to host the Paris Games. We asked Adriana how her team is balancing that sustainability objective amid tight deadlines and an intense global spotlight. 

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STEVE HENDERSHOT 
Well, then, Adriana, let’s start with why this matters. Why is it important for global events like the Olympic and the Paralympic Games to prioritize sustainability? What impact and message does that send?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
I think it’s the event that has the most people around the world connected to it. The host city has this responsibility to bring not only the Olympic values of bringing the world together, respect and seeing the value of the competitor and the fair play, but also to send some other messages. And I think Paris is taking advantage of that and using the Games to pass [on] this idea of sustainability, the importance. Paris is very committed to that.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
This isn’t your first time prepping a city for the event—you also worked on venues for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. How has the focus on sustainability changed since Rio or earlier Games?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
I have a background in sustainability, so for me it’s something core to any project. So I think everyone needs to be committed to sustainability. In Rio, we learned a lot from London’s experience, and everybody learned a lot from Sydney’s experience. It was like the first emblematic case of Olympics really focusing on sustainability. But I can see now from my own experience, from Rio to Paris, a lot [has] happened because we are developing a lot in this field in the last few years because it’s an urgent issue.

We had some objectives, some plans in Rio, and we faced some difficulties to make them happen because some subjects were still new to a lot of people that were involved with the Games. So we had to open the path and try to implement things, and I think every addition is putting some layer on this subject. And I see, for example, in Paris, we are talking about having like [an] electrical fleet, and we are talking about circular economy. We were not talking about it in 2016.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
In other words, as this field has matured, you’re aiming for smarter stuff. So what do you think about the sustainability goals this time? 

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
France is very committed to sustainability, to climate change and to the ecological transition. Paris Games are reflecting the position of France towards these achievements. We have a big strategy in terms of sustainability that involves not only the buildings and the infrastructure, but also we can see in terms of transportation, and also food and beverage and some other areas. That as a whole, we’ll have most of these targets achieved.

Using temporary infrastructure at the Paris Olympics

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
Now let’s talk about your area of focus: temporary infrastructure. Teams have been building infrastructure for global events for more than a century, and sustainability wasn’t always a priority. Given Paris’ specific sustainability goals, how have they affected the thinking and planning for this Olympic Games?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
For me personally, I’m having a completely different experience than I had in Rio. In Rio, I worked mostly on permanent buildings. I worked in a consultancy, and we were responsible for the design of the Olympic Park. It’s completely different to have this approach to a permanent building and this approach to temporary buildings. Because [in] Paris, one of the targets is to use 95% of all infrastructure [as] temporary. So this is a big challenge and also completely different than the approach you have in terms of sustainability for a permanent building.

I mean, when we’re talking about a permanent building, we are talking about the long term. How this building will behave in the long term for his whole life. And [when] we are talking about temporary, it’s quite the opposite. How can we reduce, at the minimum, the use of resources and everything? We have like the same concepts in terms of sustainability—the mindset and the way of thinking is the same—but the approach needs to be a bit different. And I think all these ideas of sustainability are bringing back also, for example, this idea of: Can we reuse this building in another place? Can we dismantle things and reuse or reduce to the minimum to make it possible? This type of thinking is coming back, with the ideas of sustainability and circular economy, and et cetera.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Let’s dive into some project details. What stands out to you? What are the most interesting or innovative things that you’re putting together for Paris in terms of temporary infrastructure?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
When I arrived, we had already established [the] sustainable design guide. And in this book we have “the must have,” “the may have,” “might have.” We have some different approaches to reach sustainability. It was very interesting to have this guide because we have very different sites. I’m working with some competition sites that are using some existing buildings; we are talking about exhibition centers, and Roland-Garros, that you have a built component. So you will already have a structure there, and then you need to add some structures to complete the functional areas that we need, the proximity needs we have. It was also interesting that Paris established some areas that are very iconic to the city image, like the Champ de Mars, the place where you have the Eiffel Tower or you have the la Concorde Square—these places will be competition venues. And everything is being constructed from zero. 

Each manager has some flexibility to adapt the solutions to their own venue, because if we are very strict with the proposals, we can’t adapt to some different types of venues. It was a good starting point. We could adapt the projects to the needs because we are also talking about an event that has very strict requirements. We have the sports clients, I would say our main clients because we can’t say no to a sports requirement. Because we need to follow international standards. But we also need to provide some spaces for volunteers. We need to provide proper space for accreditation, for food and beverage, for spectators’ areas. We need to respect the levels of service for spectators, life comfort areas, toilets and everything. I think having clear objectives and clear guidance, it helps to let each architect define the spaces following the rules but against the requirements that come from each different functional area.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
What’s one sustainability aspect that you considered in the design process? How did it affect the existing structures you’re using or the interim ones you’re creating? 

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
People are very afraid of having that extreme heat in the summertime. Because of climate change, this is a really big issue, to promote well-being and comfort zones for all spectators. And when we talk about temporary spaces, we’re not talking about planting a big garden and promoting some natural freshness. So we need to understand how we can provide the right structure to the right site. Not every space will have air conditioning. So the spaces were put into different categories, and each category has a type of ventilation. So if you have like a storage place, you don’t need exactly ventilation—only if you have some specific material. But then you have some offices that you have maybe natural ventilation, and you have some other spaces with fans, for example. And then you have some other spaces that you really need air conditioning. This was also an exercise during the development of the project, to really understand what were the needs of each space and how we would deal with this type of solution. Because we know that it will require a lot of energy, and if we can reduce the use of some equipment, for example, we can also reduce the use of energy.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
I want to go back to something you said earlier. You’re juggling a lot of stakeholders: athletes, broadcasters and spectators. They all have their wants and needs, but so does your team when it comes to the sustainability aspects of your projects. How do you discuss all these requirements while also setting your team up for success?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
From the project management point of view, I think the most important is to have the integration of all areas, because if you try to give the right answers to each one, you can’t do it separately or independently from the others. They tend to look to their own point of view, without seeing the whole picture and without seeing from another point of view of another functional area. And I think as designers, we are regents for the whole thing. We need to have the proper approach and also bring everyone to the common approach. Sometimes we need to promote some dialogue and accept some other solution or adapt their solution.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
This is interesting because there’s no such thing as a six-month delay to begin with, right? They (the Games) are going to happen.

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
Yes. Not even six hours.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
Yeah, exactly. How can those teams ensure budget, schedule, all of that stuff, that they’re able to accommodate sustainability goals while also getting the sites ready to roll on time?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
Here in Paris, we will have like 90% of the infrastructure [as] temporary. So we are talking about having tents, containers and bungalows, and structures that are standard. There is a flexibility to choose all this material, and also one of the guidance of the sustainable design guide was to check with the suppliers what we have in stock because it’s a huge event. The demand is huge, too, for the products, so we try during the project to balance the use of each type of structure to avoid, for example, having no supplier to supply this product. 

We have the clients. If they have like a last-minute requirement, and we have to adapt the project, obviously we’ll have some budget impact but also maybe we’ll be submitted to the type of product that is available at the moment. So this is something that we are very careful about, to check if everything is on the design to make sure that we won’t have this type of impact.

How others can maximize sustainability in their projects

STEVE HENDERSHOT 
Other big events, from sports competitions to concert festivals, are working to make their operations more sustainable. What would you suggest to others about how they can maximize sustainability in their work?

ADRIANA FIGUEIREDO 
It’s very easy to be emotionally involved in the whole thing. I see a lot of colleagues that work for the Olympics, we are passionate about that, about the idea of the Games. But we also need to have our feet on the floor to understand that [the] rational point of view needs to be present. And I think sustainability is good sense, most of the time. 

Reduction is one of the keywords. When you talk about some functional area and they imagine they will have 10 people working, they will ask for a big space. They will ask for air conditioning. They will ask for views. We need to have the good sense and say no, because we know what it needs in terms of space and in terms of physical needs, functional needs, and we also have the budget in our hands. It’s very difficult, but I think reduction and going to the minimum, it’s very important in this type of event. Because everybody wants the best event ever, and it’s very easy to lose control of, for example, sustainability. It’s very easy to leave it in second place and think about the beauty of the event first.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT 
Are you enjoying this episode? Please leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Your feedback helps us keep making this show. Now, let’s go to our next conversation.

The Olympics are just one major live event looking to reduce its environmental impact. Danny Klima is venue portfolio director at live event, entertainment and venue management company Ethara, headquartered in Abu Dhabi. He also leads the company’s sustainability program, which covers the big events Ethara manages—including huge concerts, international NBA basketball games, and the Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2024. Danny spoke with Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle about his team’s efforts to deliver a climate-conscious auto-racing experience. 

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Building buy-in for sustainability initiatives in the events sector

HANNAH LABELLE 
Danny, you’ve been working in the events and venue industry for nearly two decades. Tell us a little bit about one of the big areas of your work—heading up Ethara’s sustainability initiatives. What spurred you to take on this role, and what work has it entailed?

DANNY KLIMA 
Back in 2019, things started to really come together. And it was a small group of passionate people who were really dialed into sustainability and climate action and more around environmental management of our venue and the operations. It was that core group of people that came together and started to have initiatives and bring more people into the fold and create the tipping point in the business, where we were able to secure investment budget, and that allowed us to scale up the outcomes from our sustainability initiatives, whether it was around advanced technology to reduce our energy consumption; all of our track lights are LED so it reduced our electricity demands. Whether it’s our renewable project, where we’re commissioning a one-megawatt solar car park. It became a really fundamental part of the business. We ended up developing policies and procedures and formalizing steering committees. 

Our CEO sits on a sustainability steering committee, along with unit chiefs and myself and some of the key functional areas of the business. So that allowed us to become a bit more formalized in being audited by independent auditors and achieving certifications for ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards in event management and environmental management. And that gave us the ability to sign up as a signatory to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action framework. It was a long journey. It was probably over a two-year, three-year period. Of course, COVID got in the way of our plans in 2020, but I think we came back pretty strong in 2021 and 2022 to reach the tipping point in the business and have sustainability as an everyday thing that we do.

HANNAH LABELLE 
And what was that building of buy-in process like? Like you said, obviously, you had some very passionate people coming together, and you had to kind of probably get everybody else on board to make this a day-to-day process. What was that like?

DANNY KLIMA 
It’s quite challenging because what you end up having to face is people who are already busy. They’re already working long hours and have competing demands for time. When you go up to them and start to talk to them about sustainability, they’re initially a bit resistant because they see it as another job, another thing that they have to do, right? So it’s about getting really clear on what sustainability is and how it fits in the business. And then when you have a conversation with people that you need to get on board, you have to talk their language, and you have to make it come across as a way that they don’t have to do a lot to get on board. And, in fact, getting on board means that it will bring their functional area to a next level of maturity. So I think it’s about, firstly, yourself being clear what it is, what is sustainability and researching and doing the work, and then simplifying it and targeting particular areas of the business that it just makes sense for them to come on board.

HANNAH LABELLE 
And what did you find were those particular areas of the business that really lended itself to taking on those sustainability practices or objectives?

DANNY KLIMA 
Operations teams are normally quite process-driven, and they’re always looking for more efficient ways to deliver outcomes for the business. They’re already quite dialed into sustainability. Here in Abu Dhabi, we’re a desert climate, so environmental management of the venue’s important. Things like waste management and energy management, water management, it’s really at the forefront. The second stop is probably the procurement team, supply chain. Because you’re procuring so much from the market, you have the ability to influence buying decisions through embedding sustainability criteria in the tender scoring matrix. So procurement and supply chain are definitely the team that can help change the market’s behavior. We want suppliers to work with us who have sustainability strategies, who have frameworks and net-zero ambitions, and helping us deliver our objectives as well.

HANNAH LABELLE
Let’s kind of continue this discussion and really frame it within the Yas Marina Circuit and obviously one of the biggest events you guys are really working on, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. So let’s kind of look at the sustainability initiatives you’re running at the Circuit all year round first, because this is one of the venues that your organization manages.

DANNY KLIMA
We have a sustainability steering committee. We meet frequently, and we make sure that sustainability is embedded into department objectives. We do training and development. We have specific, targeted training for certain individuals in the business, and then a more general awareness training across the company that just helps people keep sustainability at the front of their mind. 

In terms of projects, we invest in advanced technologies, particularly ones that are going to reduce our carbon footprint. We measure our carbon footprint annually. We’ve been doing that since 2019 so we can track our trends. And, of course, I mentioned we’re a signatory to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action, so there are frequent working group meetings that I attend, and we knowledge share and learn. So that’s kind of the base activities throughout the year. When we get to Formula 1, it really scales up. Here we’d be talking about more targeted initiatives that focus on plastic and waste, well-being, energy use, fan travel, how fans get to the venue, how the event impacts the local community, and, of course, carbon. And we think about air quality. We think about noise. We think about groundwater pollution. There’s a lot of aspects that we think about because when you have 70,000 spectators coming to an event for a 10-hour day, that has an impact, and so having plans that can scale up and processes that are robust and well-connected is super important.

HANNAH LABELLE 
When it comes to the waste management and plastic consumption and things like that, what are some of the things that you and your teams are doing to make that a more sustainable approach?

DANNY KLIMA 
If we take waste management, for example, a few years ago, we did an initiative to move all of our tickets to e-tickets. We didn’t have to produce the plastic cards. We didn’t have to produce the lanyards. We didn’t have to produce the packaging. We didn’t need planes and trains and buses to ship the tickets all around the world. So we eliminated all of that waste and logistics from the event, which we’re really proud of.

When it comes to food waste, as an example, we’ve got 12 years of arrival patterns for our spectators, so we model and work with the food suppliers to make sure that they’re producing to the amount of people in the venue at the time. So we use data to inform the food production. If you continue down the chain, at the end of the event, we have an arrangement with a local charity called Red Crescent, and they’ll collect our nonperishable food waste, and they’ll redistribute that.

HANNAH LABELLE 
You mentioned your team has been investing in advanced tech to help meet sustainability goals. How is that affecting energy or water consumption at the Yas Marina Circuit?

DANNY KLIMA 
It’s really about trying to hit net zero. We did a pilot of a solar panel farm, but we don’t have storage. We don’t need it because we consume all of the power that we generate per day, but that’s the next step—is to look at storage solutions and see how we can generate enough power to run the venue 24/7 on a renewable. That’s a long-term objective. Then it’s also about looking at other aspects of the venue. We’re an old venue. Yas Marina Circuit [has] been operating since 2009, so we have a lot of old technology. Converting everything to LED lighting has definitely helped. Looking at simple solutions, like we have water diffusers on the bottom of taps. And that’s super important when you have 70,000 people using the venue. Instead of having the water streaming in the bathrooms, the water’s diffused so it really does reduce the amount of water that we’re utilizing.

Managing stakeholders while keeping sustainability at the forefront

HANNAH LABELLE 
So, obviously, you have the fans, but you also have F1 (Formula 1) broadcasters, you have the racing teams, you have the sponsors, you have the teams that are running the event. That’s a lot of stakeholders. How are you looking at everyone’s objectives to kind of make sure that you’re managing them so everything runs smoothly but you’re also keeping your sustainability objectives at the forefront?

DANNY KLIMA 
It’s a great question, and it’s a challenge. The thing I’ve been able to do over the last 10 years with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is to use program management skills. I’m a certified Program Management Professional^® (PgMP^®) and PMP^® (Project Management Professional^®). Using that program management framework to make sure that there’s strategic alignment, that there’s life cycle management, good stakeholder engagement, strong governance and benefits management, it means that you can take all of the different stakeholder groups, you can map the objectives, and you can align them to a mission and a vision. You can articulate strategic objectives for the different client groups. You can set out some high-level KPIs (key performance indicators), roles, responsibilities, create a roadmap, commission working groups and subcommittees. For me, it’s always been about creating forums to bring experts to so that they can do their best work together. It’s a 12-month planning cycle. We go through a very structured process of strategy, define the event requirements, refine them and value engineer where we can, deliver it and close it. We have a debrief session which goes for a day after the event to capture all of our lessons learned and what we did well and what we’d like to see next year and set a few high-level objectives. So it’s about creating that event architecture and having a blueprint that everyone can look at and understand and tap into. 

Ways to measure the success of sustainability-focused projects

HANNAH LABELLE 
When we’re looking at the sustainability initiatives you’re running during events, how do you measure the success of those? What are the metrics that you and your team are looking at to say whether or not “This was a successful sustainability portion of this project”?

DANNY KLIMA 
There are three areas that we measure our success in, and one of them is around our customers. We commission a customer survey that interviews people face to face during the event over the three days. We ask some general questions about sustainability, like “What kind of things did you notice at the event?” And then we also ask some things like “What would you like to see?” We talk to our customers, and we like to understand what they’re thinking.

We also have a number of certifications that require independent audits. So we have an audit team that goes around the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix over the days, and they cut across all of our operations, across all of the environmental aspects, and they see that the plans in action are actually working or not working. And if they’re not working we look at corrective actions as part of our post-event debrief.

The fun one, I guess, is we get scored by Formula 1. So Formula 1 will score all the promoters around the world on their sustainability plan. So the scores are around plastic and waste, well-being and nature, energy, fan travel, local community and carbon. They give us a score, and then they’ll rank the promoters. And they actually have a sustainability award each year for the top-scoring promoter. Formula 1 has done a great job to set some guidelines and provide a pathway to being more sustainable and then having that feedback mechanism through scoring and awards.

HANNAH LABELLE 
Danny, the last question is why are you passionate about your work? And why is it important that major events and the venues that are hosting them focus on sustainability?

DANNY KLIMA 
I genuinely believe what I do makes a positive difference. I love the live event sector. The energy of the people that I have worked with over the last 20 years and the people I’m working with now, we just push the boundaries all the time, and we’re always looking for something bigger and better to do. And I really enjoy playing my part in a forward-thinking, progressive company. Our mission is “Making moments that matter.” When that’s the mission that you’re going to every day, “Making moments that matter,” and you add sustainability or ESG (environmental, social and governance) onto that, it’s really great.

HANNAH LABELLE 
Fantastic. Danny, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

DANNY KLIMA 
Thank you, my pleasure.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

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