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1/ @BradyHeywood dropped his latest podcast last night and he said I’d love it. https://www.bradyheywood.com.au/podcasts/ My promised commentary follows.
2/ In this podcast, Sean Brady bites off the gnarly problem of hosting Olympic Games, telling the story of the 1976 Montreal Olympics. The stadium alone went more than 20x over budget from $40m to $836m.
3/ A woe filled tale of hubris, cold weather and heating bills and long shallow arches needing strong foundations to resist thrust forces.
4/ But did you know that the Olympic Games share something in common with all mega projects, pandemics and earthquakes?
5/ They have no average level of poor performance. You simply don’t know how bad the next earthquake is going to be and there is always a chance it could be worse than every earthquake that has gone before.
6/ The same probability applies to hosting Olympic Games and other Mega Projects.
7/ You can check out Mark Buchanan’s Book Ubiquity to get you head around the maths behind this. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/267164.Ubiquity
8/ And this phenomena as it applies to mega projects has been dubbed Fat Tailed Risk by Bent Flyvberg. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/regression-tail-how-mitigate-pandemics-climate-change-bent/
9/ Flyvberg even has an article specifically on Olympic Games. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-reasons-why-olympic-costs-blow-up-over-bent-flyvbjerg/
8/ So why should care. Well in December 2020 the Queensland State Government confirmed that it is in discussions about becoming a preferred host for the 2032 Olympic games.
9/ If we aren’t adopting risk mitigation strategy Number 1 of Olympic games - not hosting the games - then we need to mitigate the risk like crazy. Just like we are doing for the pandemic.
10/ A detailed discussion about what complexities Queensland could face hosting the games and how they could be addressed would be a good start.
