Managing Olympic Venues Simon Darcy & Tracy Taylor
The venue as the epitome of iconic design
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The venue as the epitome of iconic designMost Olympic cities have sought to use one or a number of venues to express some aspect of the city as innovator or as having a creative The Olympics association with the large scale construction of venues and facilities is related to the overall scale of the number and variety of sport events and the pressure for each subsequent Games to outdo its predecessors and deliver long standing legacies. The first modern Olympic Games, Athens 1896, heralded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium. The subsequent organizing model was to run the Olympics in conjunction with the World’s Fair, and in the three successive Olympics after Athens, this occurred with the Paris 1900 Olympics part of the Exposition Universelle, the St. Louis 1904 Olympics held as part of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and the London 1908 Olympics with the Franco-British Exhibition. These large public exhibitions provided resources including the use of venues and facilities. Beijing took this to new extremes with two striking designs for the main Olympic Stadium, the Bird's Nest, and the Olympic Pool, The Water Cube. Both the venues were at the cutting edge of engineering and materials technology, which was seen as a way to signify the "New China" or "Brand China". [Yet, the "New China" is part of the global village and as such both the venues drew on architects and engineers from the global pool professionals with the skills required to accomplish the objectives set. What these buildings demonstrated was a willingness for China to go beyond its own borders to achieve excellence in design innovation. Yet, as the International Olympic Committee push towards encouraging bidding cities from non-Western backgrounds, another management issue emerges where a great deal of the international mega event knowledge base still comes from Western-based corporations. As Zou & Leslie-Carter noted, working the Water Cube, National Swimming Aquatic Centre, crystallised some significant management issues for Western companies working with the Chinese government. These issues fell into two major areas: international partnership and managing cultural differences; and risks, dealing with intellectual property and ownership of design. The project required international partnerships between Western architectural and engineering firms together with Chinese firms across these areas. As with anyone doing business in China, there are regional differences at Beijing's regulatory transparency is significantly different to standard western practices and business has a relationship-based culture that combined for a challenging project environment. These cultural understandings understanding and relationship (guanxi) building extended into the areas of shared ownership of intellectual property and design innovation that required a great deal of consideration within the short timeframes of Olympic venue development. As has been found elsewhere in the world, foreign architectural and engineering teams need to be actively involved in ensuring that the design vision is converted during the construction phase where local practices may adopt familiar techniques rather than fulfilling the vision laid down in the other stages. However, these designs can be costly. The ‘iconic’ designs for the aquatics centre for the London 2012 Olympics were scaled down after the projected cost doubled from £75 million to £150 million in a short period soon after London had been awarded the Olympics, although this failed to prevent continued growth in costs to around £240 million (Kelso, 2008). The temptation of architects to showcase innovative designs and construction methods has been a noteworthy factor in scope creep and the under-estimation of venue costs. Added to this is the existence of a decision-makers “monument complex” (Flyvbjerg et al. 2002) as grand designs emerge within a heightened excitement of politicians and organisers. Accessibility, Olympics and ParalympicsAccessibility, the Olympics and Paralympics has only recently become synonymous for Olympic host bidding cities. The Paralympics developed from the Stoke Mandeville Games that was first held in 1948 at the same time as the 1948 London Olympics. The Stoke Mandeville Games were conceived by Dr Lugwig Guttmann when he was appointed director of the National Spinal Cord Injuries Unit at the Ministry for Pensions Hospital, Stoke Mandeville. While there was no connection between the Stoke Mandeville Games and the 1948 London Olympics, Dr Lugwig Guttmann's vision was to connect these two events right from the very beginning . It was not until the 1960 Rome Olympic Games that the two events were held in the one city and shed some of the same venues. While the event has become known as the first Paralympics it was still called the Ninth International Stoke Mandeville Games with no connection between the organising committees of either organisation . As Cashman and Darcy (2008) outline, while a series of discussions and negotiations had occurred between Dr Guttman and the International Olympic Committee it was not until the 1988 Seoul Olympics that the Paralympics were again held in the same city but this time they use the same venues and there was call operation between the two organising committees. This relationship became far better in Barcelona, which by all accounts was a model Paralympic games. However, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic and Paralympic Games showed that this relationship was ad hoc and at the mercy of the Olympic organising committee . A series of well-documented problems in Atlanta, including the athletes village and the venues being left in a state of operational chaos pointed to the need for a more in both relationships between the two games committees. As Darcy and Appleby note, the success of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games can in part be attributed to the operational partnership between SOCOG and SPOC to deliver the three month festival of the Olympics, Paralympics and cultural Olympiad (Darcy, 2003). The operational partnership established by SOCOG and SPOC alleviated many of the transitional problems that occurred between the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 1996 at Atlanta . The importance of this operational partnership cannot be overstated as it meant that those responsible for delivering the Olympic Games were largely of those responsible for delivering the Paralympic games . This meant that there was an organisational continuity which embedded an understanding of Paralympic, disability and access issues across the organisational culture of SOCOG/SPOC. However, as discussed later, there were still tensions between the organising committees and other host city bodies responsible for the long-term planning, organization and management facilities and operations. In particular, the Olympic Coordination Authority had an important role to legacy as they were the ones that would be in charge of the access issues for perpetuity. The OCA in short did this through the production of Access Guidelines, implemented the Olympic Access Advisory Committee as central to process of planning for disability and access issues, produced an access guide for the games and wrote a critical review of games access operations . The Olympic Coordination Authority still plays a critical yet albeit reduced role in the NSW government through its successor the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, which recently released its master plan of the site to 2030 . SOPA has maintained the important role that the Olympic Access Advisory Committee played through the SOPA Access Advisory Committee. With a foundation of Sydney as a template, the knowledge management processes that became part of the transfer arrangements between Olympic cities included of the importance of accessibility. The IPC has since sought to be proactive in liaising with the IOC and ensuring that bidding cities have an understanding of what is required to create an accessible Olympic and Paralympic experience . To this end the IPC sought to develop a set of accessibility guidelines and employed a manager of strategic projects who engaged a disability access consultant with experience at Sydney and Athens to develop the guidelines over the course of planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games . Nick Morris was also a Paralympic gold medallist in wheelchair basketball and was able to provide an insight into understanding to the importance of creating a seamless Olympic and Paralympic experience for those with access needs. Importantly, the guidelines recognise the importance of excess of the accessibility of host cities to creating an accessible experience for not only athletes and officials but the host city communities and tourists travelling for the Olympic experience. 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