OLYMPIC GAMES

Olympic Games



Olympic Games

Literature Reiew

The summer Olympic games are considered by many experts to be the greatest, non-defence related, world-wide logistics event. It is the gathering of over 15,000 of the world's finest athletes competing in over 28 sports (SOCOG, 2001), in a period that spans approximately one month. Recent games typically attract 20,000 members of the media (both International Broadcasters and Press), are supported by about 150,000 staff members and volunteers, host over 5.5 million ticketed spectators and are watched by billions of TV viewers (ACOG, 1997; SOCOG, 2001).

In order to stage this great event, there are immense logistics challenges that focus on planning, managing and executing the receipt, tracking, storage, transportation, distribution, installation and recovery of all equipment and materials related to:

external clients (National Olympic Committees, Broadcasters, Media, etc.);

functional areas (FAs) of the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG); and

the logistics of the Olympic venues.

Some of these challenges are faced frequently in other large events, such as political conventions, trade shows, as well as sports events (e.g. the World Cup, Super Bowl and Formula 1 races). Despite the business importance of such events and the unique aspects of event logistics, the latter have been largely overlooked by in the relevant literature.

The authors of this paper were tasked to develop the strategy and the principles of operations, as well as to design the detailed operations of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. This task was conducted in years 3 and 2 prior to Games-time (G-3 and G-2). Subsequently, two of the authors were tasked to lead the delivery of Olympic logistics operations. In order to define the scope and characteristics of Olympic logistics, the authors initially reviewed the post-games evaluation reports from the Atlanta 1996 (ACOG, 1997) and the Sydney 2000 (SOCOG, 2001) Olympic games, which contained mostly high-level information on games logistics operations. However, due to the lack of significant related literature, the gathering of key data and the acquisition of actual operational experience was deemed necessary. To this end, two of the authors served as ATHOC observers in the Sydney games and had the opportunity to visit the related logistics facilities, observe part of the operations, and interviewed extensively top logistics managers. In addition, repeated workshops were held in Athens with the logistics managers of Atlanta, Sydney and of the most recent Commonwealth Games (Manchester 2002) to transfer scope-related knowledge and data, operations knowledge, as well as lessons learned from these events. In fact, aspects of the strategy for the Athens Olympic logistics and critical concepts of operations were discussed extensively with the Atlanta and Sydney logistics directors.

This paper presents the design of the Olympic logistics organization, processes and systems in order to achieve efficient and cost effective operations, while taking into account all significant constraints and factors that stem from the nature of the games. The methodology applied has taken into account Olympic-specific characteristics, host country specific characteristics, as well as lessons learned from previous Games. This methodology is based on generation of reasonable alternatives, evaluation ...