MasterMind Blog on Parenting, Education & Tech

2016 Summer Olympics in Rio Essay Example

On the political element, Rio de Janeiro received full political support from the three levels of Brazil’s government: the city, state, and federal. In that regard, it provided all covenants and guarantees mandated by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and some different actions. The political environment was conducive as all Brazilian major political parties and all levels of government in the country pledged full backing for the bid and endorsed the conduct of the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio (Halchin & Rollins, 2017). In that regard, the formation of the Government Action Management Committee enabled proper coordination of all government undertakings during the project inception process. Despite that, the country’s Ministry of Labor and Ministry of External Relations assured the entire Olympics personnel’s entry, exit, and working arrangements. According to the IOC, the political climate of Brazil offered all the legislation provided by the Olympic charter to provide games at their capital city.

Brazil received massive criticism over poor urban planning, waste management, air quality, deforestation, and water supply on environmental factors. However, the Brazilian Olympic officials gave an overview in their bid that matched the IOC’s expectations for addressing environmental sustainability. The host to the games proposed a massive and elaborate environmental protection plan while assuring compliance for renewable energy use and management, environmental awareness, and enhancing soil protection, air quality, facilitating reforestation, using sustainable designs and construction techniques, and advancing solid waste management (Trendafilova et al., 2017). The Brazilian Olympic Committee created Olympic Sustainability Division to ensure the execution of such sustainability efforts. The country focused on having green games for a blue planet.

The social aspect is that the residents of Brazil, particularly those living in Rio de Janeiro, welcomed the idea and had no disputes due to the merits derived from the project. The people who suffered from the challenges of poor sanitation and financial prowess could benefit from the 2016 Olympics that besides deepening their identity and recognition from having unique culture through celebration, they offered the required workforce required for job opportunities and, as such, provided a better and safe environment for people to reside in the city (Halchin & Rollins, 2017). The peaceful and harmonious societal members that welcomed development made IOC accept the bid.

The 2016 summer Olympics in Rio promised to utilize telecommunication services and cloud-based technology-supported data management for the first Olympics. The move was engendered to minimize on-site data centers and server farms, abolish substantial capital infrastructure costs, and tremendously minimize delivery timelines.

Besides that, concerning the economy, having accommodated the 2014 world cup, the country had the required facilities to accommodate the sports and reduce the expenditures but renovated. Despite that,  the country recorded financial stability that resulted in the plan’s initiation and implementation (Trendafilova et al., 2017). The availability of Petrobras oil company generated extensive revenue to Rio City that gave optimism and enthusiasm for the project’s initiation. Due to such, the Brazilian three governments assured free provisions of several services, such as medical, security, immigration, transport, and customs. The government allocated $240 US to the 2016 Olympics. The promise of financial support and economic stability of the country enabled the execution of the project.

Lastly, the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games served as the central entity for staging and planning the project under the legal aspect. Despite that, favorable laws matched with the Olympic Charter (Halchin & Rollins, 2017). Brazil focused on laws encompassing the protection of human rights, anti-doping, and cybersecurity that enabled the safety of games personnel.

A Detailed Analysis of Main Aspects of Project Management in Rio 2016 Olympics

The Rio 2016 summer Olympics has integrated three primary parties: IOC, which serves as the leader and enables partnership with entire involved parties. Besides that, the other primary stakeholders include the National Olympic committees and the International Sports Federations responsible for delivering influential events (Sousa et al., 2016). Despite that, all over the world, hundreds of committers had been involved in participating and driving their interests in their Olympics project, such as judges and referees. Each stakeholder had a responsibility to partake at all stages of the project. In managing the stakeholders, ICO follows venuization takes place protocol to ensure proper scheduling of activities.

In any given project, risk management refers to the process of planning, pinpointing uncertainty, executing the qualitative risk assessment, strategizing the risk reactions, implementing risk responses, and tracking the uncertainty. The project sophistication comprises diverse risk levels, and the project risk management effectiveness substantially impacts the delivery of project success. In Brazil, before the start of the event, public security served as a primary concern. Due to the economic recession in the country, there was an escalation of the crime rate in the city of Rio spearheaded by the high inflation rates. However, Rio embraced measures to reinforce and ensure security for the smooth running of the event. Nevertheless, two scenarios help in justifying public safety for the project’s effectiveness. According to the 2015 statistical reports, more residents lost employment resulting from massive oil industry corruption leading to the recording of 30000 robbery cases and other crimes (Randeree, 2014). There is a 48 percent increase in criminal cases due to poor living conditions resulting in robbery, stealing, and assault. In the first four months of 2016, there was recorded more than 500 cases of murder. Before the event, more than 400000 people were expected across different countries, thus increasing the tension of insecurities. In that case, 205 countries, 11384 athletes, and the residents deeply became concerned about the level of Rio security. In that regard, Brazilian Olympic Committee, who was the project sponsor, arranged for 85000 troops and law enforcement officers to work and track the event closely. Thus, compared to the 2012 London Olympics, there was double the security personnel (Sousa et al., 2016). Despite that, the IOC mandated the security to concentrate on public defense, safety, and intelligence areas while in the country. The intelligence objective involved monitoring and integrating risk evaluations associated with the event while at the same time IT security ensuring data transmission is safe and on time. The federal, state, and city security bodies provided infrastructure control, armament, and bomb detection, protecting a roadblock vehicle checkpoint and escorting the motorcades.

Another primary aspect concerns scope and communication management. To a greater extent, a project manager should have extensive and robust leadership experience, knowledge, and skills to coordinate and manage every project’s distinct situation. In that case, the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics was split into various phases to comprehend better and manage every stage. The project lifecycle of the project was as follows

Scope management is essential as it ensures the project is accurately mapped and defined and that project managers can effectively allocate costs and attached labor required to complete it. On July 29, 2014, there was the first announcement update between the Olympic Public Authority and the federal government of Rio partnership. The contract documentation indicated 70 percent commencement of the project. Despite that, the Matrix indexes of the project were spearheaded by the Deodoro Sports Complex, which stated the project obtained a maturity of 5, indicating construction finalization and ready for service delivery. In that regard, total resources investment from January to July 2014 escalated from R$5.7 billion to R$6.6 billion (Sousa et al., 2016). The second communication update focused on contrasting the last resources and the total investment. The phenomenon indicated nearly 85 percent accomplishment of the project. On August 28, 2018, a third update was given, which showed an increase of total investment to R$6.8 billion. The Barra Olympic park required sufficient lighting, electricity, water networks, and sewerage arrangement, thus more labor. At that time, the estimated project cost was approximately R$7 billion (Randeree, 2014). The communication management, which involved inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs, declared completion of all Olympics venues and the required running tests for each sporting activity.

Besides that, there were millions of goods to be procured during the Rio 2016 Olympics. At first, a reverse-spending analysis was done to predict future spending through interviewing every functional area to comprehend their budget. The Procurement master schedule helped define what and when to procure since it comprised each tender operated until games time, with to-go-to-market dates, and how to consolidate and close agreements (Sousa et al., 2016). Therefore, the 2016 Rio Olympics Games management team developed a comprehensive sustainable supply chain guide and sustainability management plan that comprised before, current, and after sourcing and purchasing activities. The procurement master schedule indicated prerequisites needed by contractors to comply with including, ISO 20121, response to RFI’s, ISO 14001, FLO and ABNT Green Labels, and OHSAS 18001. The designed sustainable supply chain plan elements included transparency, operational excellence, risk management, sustainability, and cost optimization. In that regard, the sponsors, licensees, and suppliers had to observe waste disposal, health and safety, and labor practices for all procured materials. More than 85 percent of the budget went to local companies after SEBRAE was established to motivate local industry bidding as per the set requirements. The remaining was through the National Confederation of Industries that ensured big international companies adhered to the specified prerequisites (Randeree, 2014). The event confirmed audience engagement and global participation in quality management, addressed public safety improvement, and promoted a sustainable environment.

Rio 2016 Olympics Project Management Evaluation in the Context of Contemporary Project Management Research and Knowledge and The Writer’s Own Experience.

Globally, the Olympic Games act as a major sports event that, besides integrating various forms of resources required for project sustainability and effective management, it gathers people together. Factors like time, resources, and costs significantly impact the adoption of the project management model for an event like the 2016 summer Olympics. According to the statistical reports, project managers in the past Olympics encountered multiple challenges and the accepted models created via integrating several and various project management tools. The project management maturity models merit control strategies and support the definition and utilization of strategic plans improving the management approaches of project management, and the sustainability model determines the success criteria for the project completion (Dempsey et al., 2021). To a greater extent, the sustainability model is grounded on reporting and tracking the project preparation’s social, environmental, and economic performance. In that regard, the deployment of the sustainability model enables the Olympic Games organizers to enhance their accountability and responsibility qualities towards the event. However, the Olympic Games’ practical sustainability involves incorporating long-haul regional and urban policies grounded on sustainable development principles (Sousa et al., 2016). There should also be an extensive pursuit for excellence, transparency, and inclusiveness, focusing on stakeholders and ensuring sustainable development that encompasses social and economic needs as per the capability of earth’s ecosystems and resources, both future and present.

A major cannot be operated and developed without a project management tool. It assists in attaining the project goals, and the focus of any project management schedule relies upon its successful outcomes. Project managers have the mandate of ensuring efficient and effective project delivery and attaining its objectives by adopting appropriate leadership styles to complete their roles. To a greater extend, entire projects commence with a work breakdown structure into multiple activities, alongside task timelines, the human resource allocation, the financial resources, the human resource allocation, and responsible matric involving the identification of every package leader. The project manager’s primary resource constraints include budget, human resources, and time available for the project. In the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, such constraints assist planning activities and resources allocated to attain the event objectives (Dempsey et al., 2021). Due to the complicated logistics and a large number of institutions and people involved in such a project, the timeline is essential for advanced scheduling. The project management’s vital dimensions include planning, definition, and review techniques, including the budgeting, the work breakdown structure definition, and cost control and review prevention discrepancies (Sousa et al., 2016). In the project, such techniques assist in regulating it and enabling the attainment of set objectives. Project review is vital since it aids in pinpointing the activities that may not be able to achieve the goals regarding costs and schedule. It is integrated with risk management to help develop effective control measures required to prevent adverse effects on the general project.

Despite a broader agreement that mega-events like Rio Olympic significantly affect and leave a meaningful legacy to the host city, Rio de Janeiro, such projects have not focused on sustainability conversation. In my opinion, the extensive emphasis subjected by Olympics in space, in time, and speculation require to be evaluated in terms of sustainable development effects in an economic system, in the community, and in the environment. the project sponsors, including Brazilian Olympic Committee and bodies, like IOC require to enable host cities to have pragmatic long-haul legacy concerning financial, life-quality, and economic structure to maintain host country’s sustainability (Sousa et al., 2016). Project management can beneficiate from venture models, as phenomenal maturity models offer an appropriate method for constant enhancement and for designing possible scenarios.  It is essential to ensure that the successful outcomes of individual projects can be prolonged to future projects in an increasingly competitive environment, which are reinforced by a given project manager’s leadership role and procedure standards. Many industries benefit from project management techniques and practices, including skills measured via comparative models and benchmarking (Dempsey et al., 2021). In a project, benchmarking helps diagnose weaknesses and strengths, pinpoint improvement areas, and measure the existing capacity. Such project management processes, practices, and tools permit such significant events to comply with changing venture environments. The maturity models help in escalating performance, thus attaining objectives and ensuring the success of the project.

According to the statistical report, research carried out in 11 nations comprising 178 organizers of Olympic events suggested that vital success factors of such projects include the media, sporting authorities, and sponsors. In our case, the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics was planned to be ready before the game schedule to ensure that facilities receive adequate actual testing (Dempsey et al., 2021). Such a phenomenon acts as a high scope of facility management technique deployed to reduce the uncertainties of failure during the project. Venture models are necessary, mainly when budgeting control aspects are insufficient and planning does not translate to reality, to prevent the project management failure. For instance, in major events, cost overruns are available. Most of the earlier Olympic Games encountered 180 percent of moderate overruns. Due to such, the host cities tended to suffer from cost overrun incidences compared to other cities having other sporting events, hence the need for social and financial sustainability (Sousa et al., 2016). Also, there is a need to use temporary infrastructures since the statistical reports from other Olympics Games indicate host city facilities constructed obtain poor usage and financial support, resulting in massive further economic crises.

Project management refers to applying tools, knowledge, techniques, and skills to project tasks to achieve their needs, being undertaken through initiation, planning, implementation, control and monitoring, and termination by means of their integration. A project manager is required to pinpoint the project’s need, establish tangible goals, meet all stakeholder expectations, and facilitate the due establishment between scope, quality, cost, and time. Therefore, there is a need to balance scope, cost, and time conflicting factors to ensure adequate quality delivery of the project. The triple restriction theory indicates that one or more of them will be amended in changing one contradictory aspect. Moreover, those projects that deliver service as per the specified time, budget, scope, and time are regarded as successful (Dempsey et al., 2021). The 2016 Olympics’ committee organizers anticipate meeting the quality of the project. Professional project management ensures efficiency and effectiveness through strategic planning, whereby project success is attained under proactive conduct through the mobilization process. Therefore, the contemporary project management knowledge aims at producing entire deliveries planned, completing the project within the scheduled timeframe, operating with the approved budget, delivering as per the whole functional quality, performance, and specifications, together with meeting all objectives and attaining the entire stakeholder expectations (Sousa et al., 2016). The sustainability and efficiency can result in mega-event success and create awareness of the host country in the future by engendering social, economic, and environmental sustainable development, and being an opportunity to facilitate development responses and embrace innovations that result in the development of the citizen’s welfare. Despite that, it is essential to manage entire regional and local resources to ensure the 2016 Olympics meets the set prerequisites while maintaining a peaceful socio-economic region and urban milieus and protecting biological diversity, cultural integrity, and the host city’s life support systems. In the project, the residents were thoroughly involved in the consultation process, and risks were identified and mitigated to benefit all the host populace equally. Shockingly, such principles need to be incorporated into the earlies phases of the 2016 Olympics’ planning and conceptualization, embedding robust governance and sustainable development guidelines.

In any project, knowledge management is essential to properly organize tasks, information, people, resources, and processes to attain the set objectives. All people should ensure documentation is critical to the success of the project. There is a need to utilize the tools to ensure that the project does not result in failures (Dempsey et al., 2021). To a greater extent, contemporary project managers should embrace the abilities needed to achieve time targets and cost and master the required competencies to make adequate decisions, select efficient processes, choose a sufficient method, and involve all stakeholders.

Lessons Learned from the Conception, Initiation, and Management of the Project

In the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, one of the lessons includes establishing project leadership responsibilities. According to statistical reports, most of the stakeholders involved in the project had been interviewed to become committed to the project adequately. There was a division of responsibilities for the demanding activities in the whole project conception, initiation, and management (Paver & Duffield, 2019). In that regard, leading sophisticated projects mandates a different skill set, and the leaders should come from all involved organizations. Project leadership requires additional personnel with different disciplines working knowledge to help appropriately plan, empower, and solve the available challenges (US Ministry of Defense, 2021). Such a move ensures accountability and making effective decisions, thus providing better utilization of time and avoiding being extensively invested in one activity. In our case, there were frequent updates on the project’s progress pertaining to the required budget, procurement requirements, and scheduling.

Another lesson is that; it is vital to estimate resources needed during initiation carefully. Mostly, during initiation, projects are significantly under-resourced due to challenges to quantifying what is required. There is a short supply of experience and skills, and the best individuals typically are needed to deliver the highest priority work (Paver & Duffield, 2019). Even though the project requires approval, it is good to be ahead in scoping the resource requirements for the next project phase. In maintaining project pace and ensuring its success, it is required to develop resourcing strategies. It is essential to deploy practical project-management tools to pinpoint the right balance of capabilities, experience, and skills (US Ministry of Defense, 2021). Despite that, using governance forums to offer adequate challenge and support serves as another lesson learned. During the project’s conception, initiation, and management, respective authorities, like governance boards, help in decision-making and support. For example, in project management, the state, city, and federal government offered the security to ensure its success.

It is also essential to engage constantly, transparently, and early with the partners. It is necessary to understand the technical landscape since people overlook their sponsors during project initiation, creating uncertainties. It must help in ensuring that resources are not wasted together with time. Therefore, stronger relationships provide project agility and effective delivery of plans. Despite that, such relationships with key stakeholders, like sponsor offers projects with essential visibility to map a sound, flexible, and expansive view of procurement pathways aligning with technical prerequisites and portfolio strategies (Famuwagun, 2019). In any project, during the project is good to break down tasks into actionable tasks. The phenomenon assists in avoiding mistakes and reducing risks. In any project, there are massive uncertainties related to cost, scope, deadline, and quality. Therefore, it is good to know what went well or wrong with the small activities and develop mitigation strategies. Besides, another lesson is essential to communicate coherent and sound objectives that match the project vision at project phases. A project should share how it will ensure sustainable development while at the same time ensuring the social, financial, and economic welfare of the host city. The project manager needs to develop viable strategic planning strategies while ensuring the project’s long-term goals. It becomes necessary to embody leadership behaviors and working methods expected from project teams (Paver & Duffield, 2019). The phenomenon involves environmental scanning. People come from different organizations with diverse cultures, which makes it necessary to understand them for the effective execution of duties. Another lesson learned is that it is adequate to ensure responsibilities have well-defined outcomes and offer the authority to deliver. The mega-projects embrace capabilities requiring frequent upgrades and updates. The benefits and results derived from the project can be extremely difficult to quantify. However, every project requires political support to ensure that the project’s success does not get disrupted. In that regard, it is essential to consolidate expertise within the project. The move ensures effective management of the available resources and providing all the aspects of the project management are well catered for to ensure quality delivery and the project’s success.

Another lesson is that it is vital to comprehend the route to market and design procurement strategy early. Innovation should be enhanced through past and future supply chain management research to pinpoint areas of improvement. It is good to analyze the best procurement strategy that will result in better results. In our case, the management team came up with the procurement master plan that ensured meeting the entire procuring requirements, including attached policies (US Ministry of Defense, 2021). Also, establishing an actual baseline and keeping track of assumptions serves as another lesson. At the beginning of the project lifecycle, most of them design an extensive plan that outlines project milestones and activities on a detailed timeline that assists in identifying main risks and managed using tools, like risk register and risk matrix (Paver & Duffield, 2019). To a greater extent, it may become easy to overlook risk management. In that regard, ineffective risk management spearheads poor presumptions to a project’s baseline, leading to time wastage while dealing with arising problems.

Observations and Conclusions on the Analysis

There are some recommendations required for any mega-project. At first, it is advisable to come up with a long-haul strategy. The Olympic games should have a span of 15-20 years, whereby sustainable development principles should be integrated into the project phases of conceptualization, initialization, and management. In that regard, every stage is unique and may need a specific tool. Secondly, there should be an integrated approach whereby all Olympic infrastructures and venues should comply with the strategic urban planning of the country and host city. In that move, there should be a partnership for sustainability between the private and public stakeholders (Kerzner, 2018). There should be an early inclusion of Olympics games into sustainable regional and urban strategies, which comply with a vision of the country, and public participation is vital at ensuring that the project benefits them.

The project governance was identified in the project, whereby the project sponsor was identified, and the board of governance responsible for the smooth running of activities was mandated for overseeing the project. On stakeholder management, a protocol chain of communication was established together with their responsibility in the project phase and strategies of controlling them to minimize disputes. Regarding risk management, the issues affecting the city were identified, and measures were deployed to curb them effectively (Famuwagun, 2019). The scope management embraced proper mapping of the project for effective resource allocation. The cost management ensured frequent budget review and partnership to ensure no project cost overruns as per the planned budget. The procurement management involved research of past games to know the procurement procedure and requirements improvements required to provide practical project sustainability. Before the project, proper planning of resources and selection of project management team was done, which ensured the efficiency of the project. Despite the criticism of not continuing with the project to environmental concerns, the issue was communicated for rectification. For the project’s success, the best project management practices followed included developing the project resource plan, ensuring frequent communication, managing arising risks, ensuring transparency, and establishing project scope and objectives (Kerzner, 2018).  The project deliverables, its performance, and the core project constraints were elaborately identified and explained how it affects the project. Despite that, there was an effective project management team responsible for managing the arising risks of the project and together with recording and documenting them. All the involved parties were communicated with frequently concerning the project schedule.

References

Halchin, L. E., & Rollins, J. W. (2017). The 2016 Olympic Games: Health, Security, Environmental, and Doping Issues. Current Politics and Economics of South and Central America10(2), 203-249.

Dempsey, M., Brennan, A., Kaub, V., & McAvoy, J. (2021). A thought piece on the effectiveness of Contemporary Project Management and its top performing enablers IEEE Engineering Management Review.

Famuwagun, O. S. (2019). Project Management Methodologies and Bodies of Knowledge in Contemporary Global Projects.

Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.

Paver, M., & Duffield, S. (2019). Project Management Lessons Learned “The Elephant in the Room.” The Journal of Modern Project Management6(3).

Sousa, M. J., Lima, F., & Martins, J. (2016). Project Management in 2016 Olympic Games. In New Advances in Information Systems and Technologies (pp. 511-521). Springer, Cham.

Sousa, M. J., Lima, F., & Martins, J. R. (2016). Models for project management in 2016 Olympic Games. Models for project management in 2016 Olympic Games, 32-38.

Randeree, K. (2014). Reputation and mega-project management: Lessons from host cities of the Olympic Games. Change Management: An International Journal13(2), 1-7.

Trendafilova, S., Graham, J., & Bemiller, J. (2017). Sustainability and the Olympics: the case of the 2016 Rio summer games. Journal of Sustainability Education16(3), 1-22.

US Ministry of Defense. (2021). PROJECT INITIATION: LESSONS LEARNED REPORT. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/993525/20210614-Project-Initiation-Lessons-Learned-Report-2.pdf

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *