Project Assessment and Selection: Rio Olympics 2016 - University Paper

This project assessment analyzes the 2016 Rio Olympics as a large-scale project, examining its scope, time, and cost goals. It details the four-stage planning process: strategic planning, business area analysis, project planning, and resource allocation. The paper identifies both the successes, such as venue completion and security, and the failures, including worker deaths, environmental damage, and displacement of residents. It concludes with an evaluation of the project's overall success, considering both sporting achievements and the impact on the local population. The project highlights the role of project management in such a complex undertaking, including a discussion of the project manager's role and the sponsor. The student's work provides valuable insights into the complexities and challenges of managing a global event, with references to support the analysis.

Running Head: PROJECT ASSESSMENT AND SELECTION
Project Assessment and Selection: Rio Olympics 2016
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Description of the Project
The project chosen for the purpose of analysis in the paper is the Summer Olympics 2016
that was hosted in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in the month of August. In this event, 207 nations
participated in a wide range of sports and considering the nature of the games, this event can be
considered as a very large scale of project requiring a large number of various stakeholder
groups, parties and contractors to be involved in arranging, managing, executing and closing the
project.
The scope of the project included but not limited to the following.
Redesign of the Maracana Stadium for hosting various sports events
Construction of sports facilities for indoor games in the event
Construction of Olympic village for the players and staff of each of the
participating nations
Structural design and construction of various parts of the city for the convenience
of traffic during the event
Training of security personnel for providing security to the players, staff and
audience in the event
Purchasing sports equipments for the various games in the event
Brazil was selected to host the Olympic 2016 event in 2009 and in the next 7 years,
preparations were undertaken by the Government for hosting the event (Vincent, 2019). In the 7
years’ time period, various construction and renovations were undertaken in order to ensure the
best and modern facilities were provided to the sportsmen performing in the games.

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The total costs of hosting the event from the preparations to the closing was estimated to
be US$4.6 billion.
Use of Four Stage Planning Process in the Chosen Project
The selected project is of very grand scale and thus, without proper planning, an event of
such size could not have been possible. The four stage planning process for the project in this
event can be utilised as follows.
Strategic Planning – This is the first of stage any planning for a project. Strategic
planning generally involves initial requirement analysis, project roadmap development and
creation of the abstract project plan. For the Rio Olympics, the strategic plan started in 2009 once
the country was selected to host the global event.
Business Area Analysis – Once the strategic planning is completed, it is required to
analyse the business area of the project, especially for the global events like the Olympics.
Business area analysis is essential due to the scale of the event and the grand amount of expenses
involved.
Project Planning – Once the business area is sorted, it is required to develop the overall
plan for the project. This part follows the strategic planning and business area analysis and
requires the stakeholders to develop plan of the project including scope, time, budget, quality
plan and others (Sousa, Lima & Martins, 2016). In case of the Rio Olympics, the project
planning was done from 2009 to 2010 in which, every major and minor detail were analysed and
included in the plan.

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Resource Allocation – When the project plan is finalised, resource allocation is necessary.
This is mainly done by allocating human as well as material resources in the various work
packages of the project work breakdown structure. In this project, after planning, human
resources were allocated to various activities and material resources were allocated to various
construction and redesign work.
Rights and Wrongs in the Project
While the Rio Olympics has mainly considered to be a very successful event in terms of a
global sporting event, considering the various parts of the project including inside and outside of
the sporting field, many rights and wrongs in the project can be identified (Lima & Sousa, 2016).
Rights:
 The venues, villages and setups had been successfully prepared within the given
timeframe.
 All the proposed construction works were completed as per the plan.
 There were no major budget overshoots in the project.
 The security systems were properly trained and there have been no incidents of
security breach during the event.
Wrongs:
 As per reports, thousands of workers died during the preparation, construction and
redesign works of the project. These reports also state that there were not
sufficient safety programs and equipments for the workers and they were also not
paid as per the industry standards.

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 The entire project had extremely major negative impact on the environment. The
solid and liquid waste created during the entire project were not dumped properly
resulting in significant damage to nearby ecosystem.
 Some project work like new building construction, flyover construction, security
systems development and others resulted in uprooting of thousands of people who
did not have permanent homes. Thus, the project resulted in increasing the
number of homeless people in the city, which were not visible in front of the
Olympics event.
If an evaluation is to be done, Rio Olympics can be considered as a successful project in
view of the sporting world whereas it can be considered as unsuccessful in view of the native
people who lost their homes, family members and resources due to the project (Tang & Cooper,
2018).

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References
Lima, F., & Sousa, M. J. (2016, September). IT Project Management Practices in Olympic
Summer Games_Rio2016 Case Study. In 10th European Conference on Information
Systems Management: ECISM 2016 (p. 130). Academic Conferences and publishing
limited.
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.
Tang, T., & Cooper, R. (2018). Predictors of Simultaneous Media Use during the 2016 Rio
Games. Journal of Sports Media, 13(2), 119-141.
Vincent, T. (2019). How to explain Olympic Games cost overruns in terms of Project
Management1, 2.