1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study of Project Management Failure
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Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications Civil and Environmental Engineering 6-2013 1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study of Project Management Failure Ashish Patel HWH Architects Engineers Planners, Inc, [email protected] Paul A. Bosela Cleveland State University, [email protected] Norbert Delatte Cleveland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/encee_facpub Part of the Civil Engineering Commons, and the Construction Engineering and Management Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Publisher's Statement © ASCE Original Citation Patel, A., Bosela, P., and Delatte, N. (2013). "1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study of Project Management Failure." J.Perform.Constr.Facil., 27(3), 362-369. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Civil and Environmental Engineering at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study of Project Management Failure 1 2 3 Ashish Patel ; Paul A. Bosela, F.ASCE ; and Norbert J. Delatte, F.ASCE Introduction capital expenditures in the budget, $130.8 million was for the sta dium and $ 16.4 million forthe velodrome. The Olympi c Village was On May 12. 1970. extensive lobbying and diplomacy by Montreal listed undernoncapital expenditures as $5 mi llion. Howell teons this Mayor Jean Drapeau paid off when Montreal was awarded the 1976 Drapeau's kitchen-table budget that no one ever took seriously but Olympic Games over strong bids from Moscow and Los Angeles. that also no oneever gathered the data to challenge. It was suspicious Although both competing cities provided fimmc iu l guarantees. from the stan, however, because the recenlly concluded Munich Drapeau sialed thai the Games would cost il rnilximum of $124 Games had cost lhe equival ent of $600 million. Shortly afterward. million and that the hi story and reputation of Montreal would stand in January 1973. Drapeau made his often-quoted (llIld often-derided) in place of a guarantee (Auf deT Maur 1976). stat ement that "the Monlreal Olympics can no more have a de fi ci t For the next few years, very little was done. The original plan was than a man cu n have a baby" (Howel l 2009). Howell later observed scrapped. Mayor Drapeau became enamored with architect Roger that ··amazin gly. evcry time the Mayor revised his cost estimate. we Taillibert's Pare des Princcs in Paris. Tellingly, the construction cost for believed thaI it was COITt!c t at last" (Howell 2009). thai stadi um had ballooned from the original estimated $9 million to Drapeuu laid out u plan for $3 [0 million in financing. the bulk of a final cost of $25 mi ll ion. Drnpeau se[ected Taillibert without a com which would come from the sale of $250 million in Ol ympic com petition. Li ke Taillibert. Dmpeau had had previous problems with cost memomtive coins. The fedeml government of Cooada reviewed th e oveffilns. The Olympi c bid wa~ based in part on Montreal's successfu l budget and thought that $ [00 million in coin s:tl es would be more hosting of the [967 Expo. However. the finul cost ofthe Expo was $430 rc;l listi c. The federal government did nOI want to get stuck with the bill million- much more thoo the 1964 estimate of $ 160 million. A new for the construction or th e Games. The cit y of MonlrcuJ had mude Ihe plan was laid out in a press conference on April 6, 1972. Almost 2 years commitmcnt. and Cooada und the Province of Quebec did not wish to of preparation time had been wa'>ted (Auf der Maur (976). be responsible for fu lfi ll in g that commitment. Strangely. they seemed In November [972. Drapeau gave a fi gure of $3 10 million a~ the to think that the construction cosl estimates were in the ball park. At tOia l projected cost of the Olympic Games. Of the $250 million in this point in the process. Drapeau suggested at 11 news conference that the real problem would be figuring out how to spend the surplus from the fi rst self-financin g Games in Olympic history (Howell 2009). The extensive construction of the Olympic facilities was justi fied. in pan. on the idea that the facilities could be used after the Games for other spons. specifica ll y using the O lympic Stadium for the Montreal Expos baseball team. However. the potential users were not consulted during the pl:l11lling process (Howell 2009). The suita bilit y of th e fuci lities for usc lifter the Games ended will be di scussed later in this paper James Neal begins his textbook. entit led COlI,rtm ctioll Cost Es- lill!(IIillg COII"epls and Their Appliw tiol1s (Neil 1979), with an eight-page case study of the Montreal Olympics complex. Nick Auf der MaUL a newspaper columnist and member of the Montreal City Council. wrote The BiIlioll·Dollar Came: Jelln DrUpe(1II (md the /976 Olympics about all the problems (Auf der Maur (976), In late July 1976, at the final session of the World Congress on New Zealand rugby team had just played in South Africa, and South Space Structures, a highly controversial panel discussion was held Africa was barred from the Olympics during the apartheid era. Just on the project, which was later documented in ASCE’s Civil En before the Montreal Olympics started, 28 African countries walked gineering magazine. It included some prominent consulting engi out of the Games, joined by Guyana and Iraq (Strenk 1978). neers from the United States, such as Anton Tedesko and Lev Zetlin, The issues of the politics and prestige of the Olympic Games and some engineers and architects from Canada and elsewhere. A have continued since Montreal. “There’s a myth growing, on this sidebar to the article summarized some of the comments that had Olympic mess, that it all started with the tacky, overcommercialized appeared in the Montreal Star newspaper under the title, “Cost-Be- Summer Games in Atlanta. Which led to all the bribes and greed of Damned Attitude Brought on Olympic Woes” (Civil Engineering Salt Lake City. It’s a nice myth, but it’s wrong. The real sleaze got its 1976). start with Jean Drapeau and the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. This paper has been assembled from a variety of sources rather There was the blueprint for corruption.” (Fotheringham 1999, p. 76). than firsthand observations. As such, it could be subject to the biases of the authors of the source information and may be inadvertently slanted. Care has been taken to balance the opposing viewpoints as Montreal Olympic Complex much as possible. The Montreal Olympic complex consisted of a main stadium, a ve lodrome (bicycle racing venue), roads, walkways, practice fields, an Olympic Games, Politics, and Prestige Olympic Village housing facility, and other structures and land scaping. The complex is shown in Fig. 1. The quadrennial Olympic Games are so prestigious that cities and Planning began in 1970, and preliminary estimates prepared at countries commit substantial resources to bidding for the right to that time indicated a projected cost for the entire complex of $120 hold them and then invest heavily in the facilities in which to hold million, including a projected cost for the main stadium of $40 them. For the 1976 Games, Moscow and Los Angeles both bid million. The final cost in 1976 was $1.5 billion, with $836 million against Montreal, and concerns about cold war politics weighted the for the main stadium. In addition to the cost overruns, there were scales in Montreal’s favor. Moscow would host the 1980 Games, considerable time overruns, which meant that the complex was al boycotted by the United States and its allies, and Los Angeles would most not completed in time for the Olympics, and some of the final host the 1984 Games, boycotted by the Soviet Union and its allies, activities were still ongoing at the time the Olympics started. Major showing that the concerns about politics were well-founded. The components originally planned, such as the retractable roof, were Montreal Games also took place against the backdrop of the 1972 not begun until after the Olympics (Neil 1979). Munich Games and the hostage crisis that resulted in the death of The original owner was the City of Montreal, Quebec, which Israeli athletes. After 1972, there were concerns about how the contracted with architect Roger Taillibert to design the Olympic Games could go on, if they should, and how they could be kept safe. Park, including the Olympic Stadium and velodrome (Auf der Maur Kidd (1992) contends that the politics of Canada, Quebec, and 1976). Mr. Taillibert lived and conducted business in Paris, France. Montreal played a large part in the difficulties of the 1976 Games. Both the velodrome and Olympic Stadium were relatively unusual, Much of the tension was brought about by the resurgence of unique artistic creations. Quebec’s Francophone nationalism and the succession movement. The Mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, has been criticized for an In addition, Montreal had long been dominated economically, po almost worshipful attitude toward Taillibert. The mayor rejected litically, and culturally by a small Anglophone elite that was at odds cuts that could have saved up to $146 million. He insisted on with the Quebec nationalism movement. The federal government of building the stadium of concrete rather than steel because Taillibert Canada supported Montreal’s bid reluctantly and ruled out direct was a precast-concrete expert—although a steel stadium might have financial support for the Games.