[Source: Tokyo 2020] The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee and the Rugby World Cup 2019 Organising Committee have signed a landmark collaboration agreement in which the two organisations will exchange knowledge and resources to maximise benefits and impacts for their respective events - two of the world’s biggest - being hosted by Japan over the next three years.

The organisers will share their experiences preparing for and managing major sporting events, including security measures, transport infrastructure, venue management, volunteer programmes, and anti-doping programmes.

A signing ceremony to mark the inauguration of the agreement was held on Wednesday (26 April), attended by Toshiro Muto, Tokyo 2020 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Akira Shimazu, CEO, Rugby World Cup 2019 Organising Committee.

John Coates, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and chairman of the IOC Coordination for the Games of the XXXII Olympiad Tokyo 2020 commented:

“The attention of the sporting world is already focused on Tokyo and Japan as they prepare to host the 2019 Rugby World Cup and Olympic Games in 2020. Just as there are many significant opportunities and benefits that will accrue to the host country from these events, there will be synergies and benefits, such as in the training of volunteers, from the two Organising Committees working closely together in the preparation years.”

Bill Beaumont, Chairman of World Rugby commented: “World Rugby welcomes this landmark agreement, which will further boost preparations for two very special major sporting and cultural events. There are many synergies between the hosting of these two events, from technology to venues, and from security arrangements to volunteer training. We look forward to working with all parties to deliver on this opportunity. Rugby is a sport where a strong common vision, shared values and teamwork underpin success and I am sure that this agreement will be great for Rugby World Cup, great for the Olympic Games and great for the people of Japan.”

The organisers expect the agreement between Rugby World Cup 2019 and Tokyo 2020 to maximise the combined legacy of the events for Japan, for the Asian region and for international sport. Improved sporting facilities, as well as enhanced security systems, transport infrastructure and what is hoped will be an emerging volunteer culture will continue to benefit Japanese society long after the two events are over. The events will also aim to renew Japan’s international reputation as an experienced sporting event host.

Events have the power to inspire and change people’s lives in a number of different ways. They can generate economic growth, international and domestic profile as well as a wide range of social and cultural benefits for their hosts, both through their immediate impact and through any subsequent legacy or long term development.

Measuring and reporting the impact of an event are fundamental when evaluating the success of an event, and is vital for any future planning.

Recognising the importance for the need for a good evaluation tool for the UK events industry, partner organisations worked together to develop eventIMPACTS.

Launched in 2010, the online toolkit comprises of key guidance and good practice principles to help event organisers improve their evaluation of the outcomes – attendance, economic, environmental, social and media impacts - associated with staging sporting and cultural events. It caters for events of all sizes and categorises impacts into groups based on their potential complexity and cost to measure.

eventIMPACTS was created out of the belief that no event should be staged without an accompanying commitment to measure its success against the objectives initially set and since its launch it has proven itself to be a leading resource for the events industry. Through the use of the tool, consistent evaluation methods, measures and impact assessments provide the ability to model event outcomes and make better forecasts, which in turn improve the industry.

However, just like events must evolve and respond to customers’ needs and changes in technology, so too must the way they evaluate them. Recognising this need, eventIMPACTS has further been developed and now includes updated guidelines relating to social and media impacts. The new guidelines now allow organisers to measure how events positively impact peoples’ behaviour and quantify exposure across a range of media platforms.

These additional resources will allow event organisers to measure social impacts in areas of satisfaction, identity and image, participation and volunteering and skills. Advice on how to measure the media impacts has been extended to include volume of coverage, engagement and tone and value.

These improvements mean organisers across the UK are now better equipped to calculate the overall impact of their events and we know they agree. A survey on the new resources has revealed overwhelmingly positive feedback from the events industry. In particular, it was widely agreed that eventIMPACTS provides a clear structure for assessing the benefits from events.

The co-founder of FOCUS Wales Festival, Neal Thompson, said “eventIMPACTS is now easier to use and reveals much more information on the actual overall contribution our events make. It is such an important resource for highlighting how integral events are, both to the economy and society itself in the UK as a whole.”

The positive response from the industry shows the toolkit fulfils a need in the market and is helping ensure event organisers can see if they achieve the level of impact they desire from their event. 

Just as advances in technology will continue to impact on event delivery, so too will it impact what we measure. Going forward, eventIMPACTS will continue to evolve with the changes within the industry, technology and society, to ensure it continues to be a tool that allows best practice.

To see the toolkit and find out more, visit www.eventimpacts.com

Following its launch in April 2016, the programme attracted in excess of 2,700 applications, reflecting the high level of interest in Expo 2020 amongst the nation’s young people. From these, 150 candidates were invited to assessment days that began last month at the Expo site in Dubai South. Expo 2020 Dubai took an innovative approach to these workshops, using a series of engaging challenges and tasks to evaluate candidates on criteria that included leadership, teamwork and their ability to identify and solve problems under pressure. 
Ila Kuntum, an Indonesian engineering student currently completing her Masters of Science at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, said, “I really enjoyed the fact that the assessment included group-based activities. It showed us how real-life, quick decision scenarios play out, and highlighted our strengths and weaknesses.”
Emirati Marketing graduate, Ayesha Sharaf, and Farshied Jabarkhyl, who has studied in both the UK and UAE, described the day as “very challenging and unlike any other assessment I have ever taken part in. It taught us the importance of being open minded to other people’s opinions and ideas and was a great chance to meet new people.” 
Candidates were then scored on their performance and around 50 were invited to attend a further round of one-to-one interviews with senior members of the Expo 2020 team, including the heads of the 19 departments offering work placements.
Commenting on the programme, Manal AlBayat, Vice President of Engagement, Expo 2020 Dubai, said: “The Apprenticeship Programme is an important part of our commitment to engage and empower young people through our journey leading up to Expo 2020 Dubai. We were heartened to see such a high demand from a diverse group of applicants and particularly impressed by the high quality of applications received.”
“The feedback from candidates that have taken part at the various stages of this process demonstrates the value of this experience. Those that are selected for the programme will develop useful competencies for their future career development, and will be important contributors to Expo 2020 Dubai’s educational and economic legacy. We are all looking forward to welcoming the first cohort later this year.”
The Apprenticeship Programme is aligned with the UAE Government’s Youth Empowerment Strategy. It also reflects Expo 2020 Dubai’s theme, “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future”, and addresses one of the Expo’s subthemes, “Opportunity”, by providing practical opportunities for young people to develop a skillset that positions them for future employment across a range of industries. 
Successful candidates will be informed in mid-July with the programme commencing at the end of August.
Source: Expo 2020 Dubai
 

During the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games the Future Arena will host the handball events and be packed with 12,000 spectators. When the Games are over its structure will be dismantled and used in the construction of four state schools for two thousand children in the city of Rio de Janeiro. 
Three schools will be constructed in Barra da Tijuca and one in Maracanã - each accommodating 500 students – as part of a US$77m legacy project.
The brief for the handball arena was to build something that would contribute to the city of Rio beyond the 2016 Olympic Games. A first for the Olympics, the venue will make use of an innovative technique called "nomadic architecture", thus ensuring that even a temporary structure can leave a lasting legacy. 
The arena will be dismantled and the components transported to four separate locations to be rebuilt into state schools. The main elements that will be reused are the roof, rainscreen cladding, main structural steel elements and disabled ramps, which will form the shells of the four schools. The open nature of the rainscreen and external ramp that create the distinctive architecture of the arena will be recognisable in the new schools. 
UK-based firm AndArchitects led by Rio-based practice Lopes, Santos & Ferreira Gomes provided the design for the handball arena. AndArchitects’ experience with six temporary buildings at London 2012 helped them jointly win the bid for this ground-breaking project. 
Careful thought was given to what materials and systems of construction would allow this transition with minimal wasted material. The schools were designed simultaneously with the arena. The grid for the floor plates and the roof were all designed from the outset for both buildings so that the panels on the façade and on the floor and roof could be easily relocated in order for the modules to work for both buildings.
After the Games, once the arena has been converted into schools, the students will be reminded of their schools’ role in the Olympic Games. One idea that is being reviewed is that the names of the stars of the Brazilian team are engraved onto the cladding of the building and these names will remain on the walls of the classroom to inspire students. 
 

Agenda One: Event Delivery
The first agenda is to deliver the Games; that is non-discretionary and something you have to do. The cost is given and it’s mandatory, because it’s the IOC requirements and there’s national pride involved and a number of other considerations. 
The cost of this has been remarkably constant over the last 15 years – around US$2.5bn to US$3bn. But that’s covered by income from IOC contributions, local sponsorship, ticket sales and merchandise so there is no net cost.  

Agenda Two: Sporting Legacy
The second agenda is leaving a sporting legacy. That is partly mandated by the IOC requirement, but you have some leeway on how you do that. So you have a choice of whether your stadiums and arenas are permanent structures, which always runs the risk of being white elephants, or temporary or demountable structures – or even, according to Agenda 2020, you can move it to another city. 
For example, if you don’t have a velodrome you have to deliver one somehow. And if you do it correctly, that can be a legacy – but there are lots of examples of not being a legacy: The Athens 2004 Games is the prime example of white elephants and a complete horror story.
The main issue with this second agenda is that venues should be designed for legacy and enabled for Games. Most people do it the other way round and then there’s a rush to modify it for legacy.
A positive example is the aquatics centre in London; we worked very closely with Zaha Hadid on that. It was designed to be a community swimming pool with 2,500 seats. Temporarily, those wings were built – they looked absolutely awful, but they were functional and it ended up being an Olympic-compliant aquatics centre of 17,500 seats. It was designed for legacy and enabled for the Games temporarily. 

Agenda Three: City Legacy
The third agenda is what you want to use the Olympics for and our advice to any city or region that wants to host the Games is that you first have to decide what you are going to use the Olympics for. And if you don’t get that right, you run into a lot of problems about public acceptance of the Olympics as a project.
This is where discretion comes into play. It cost London GB£1.8bn just to make the Olympic park into a building site. London made that call because it wanted to use the Olympics to regenerate part of East London. The city didn’t have to do it; they chose to do it because otherwise it would never happen; it would still be a dump with remnants from the blitz, asbestos, oil and corpses.
A bad example is Sochi. A lot of what happened in Sochi had nothing to do with the Olympics. It cost US$55bn, but only a fraction of that was Olympic costs. They wanted Sochi to be a tourist destination and they also wanted to be able to build for the football World Cup in 2018. So they wanted to use it for something completely different from the Winter Olympics. That was their choice and that has poisoned the bidding process for a number of other cities, including my home town of Oslo where the population got a backlash going against bidding for the 2022 Winter Games. 
Our advice to cities or regions who want to stage Olympic Games is to first of all to get the third agenda right, because that is what you need to sell it to the population, to get a yes vote on a possible referendum. It has to be something more tangible than a velodrome. 
What we like to do very early in the process is to make the city or region able to make an informed decision whether to bid or not. To do that they need to cost out all the three agendas. What we usually recommend is to do a number of technical and financial feasibility studies, cost-benefit analyses over 20 to 30 years. 
One city we have recently worked with is Amsterdam, who will probably not bid for the 2028 Olympic Games. And way back in 2002-2003 we wrote the original feasibility study that made a business case for London to bid for the Games. 

Beyond the Bid – Tokyo and Qatar
We also see our role to be the trusted technical advisor for a host city. We like to work in tandem with the communications agencies, because if you give them a free rein you need a lot of engineers and technical consultants to clean things up in the back room.
We have been working for two and half years on Tokyo 2020 for Tokyo Metropolitan Government; we are currently negotiating for a third year. When we started work on Tokyo, we looked at some of the things that they proposed and advised that they weren’t going to work. The stadium was one of those things, and some of the temporary venues they wanted to put on the island out in the bay.
And we have been working for about five years on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. From our side it’s going well; we have been working on technical assurance of the stadiums: sitting client-side and advising the design consultants based on FIFA compliance and other criteria. 
The thing I am a little bit concerned about is that I don’t think they’d gone far enough on planning what they wanted. I think they sold it on the basis of demountable stadiums, so they basically said we are going to build a number of 40,000 seater stadiums and send 20,000 seats off to Africa. It is feasible, but it hasn’t been designed yet. Somebody calculated that you need 178 containers to dispatch the 20,000 seats. Apart from that, everything is deliverable, no doubt about that.

This article is based on a Host City interview with Erik G Andersen, Special Advisor of Arup’s Host Cities Advisory Service. Andersen has worked on 10 Olympic Games over 25 years
 

Sochi 2014 will create a significant “human” legacy of experience gained by those working to successfully deliver the Winter Games, according to leading figures in the IOC and the Organising Committee.

“The Games will leave a tremendous human legacy,” said Jean-Claude Killy, Chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for Sochi 2014 on Friday. 

“The highly trained professionals and volunteers from the Games will no doubt play a key role in the success of the World Cup and other major sporting events that Russia will host in the future.”

Sochi 2014 marks the first time that the Olympic Winter Games have been held in Russia and signals the first of many major sporting events being held in the country, with the inaugural Russian Grand Prix due to take place in Sochi in October 2014 and the FIFA World Cup coming to cities all over Russia – including Sochi – in 2018. 

“There will be tremendous synergies for the country in a number of areas as it strives to put on these great sporting events,” said Killy.

Olympic University

Hosting the 2014 Olympic Winter Games has also led to the establishment of the Russian International Olympic University (RIOU), which opened in Sochi earlier this year to train the next generation of sports management professionals, catering to the demand in Russia and around the world for highly qualified specialists in the international sport industry. Topics of study will include venue management, event management, media management, governance and sport diplomacy, and talent management. 

“Currently, not just in Russia but all over the world, there is a lack of qualified specialists in sports management,” said RIOU Rector Professor Lev Belousov. “RIOU's task is to set up a mechanism for leading Russian and international practising specialists to pass on practical knowledge to students and to train a new generation of highly qualified sports managers in specialisms needed by the Olympic and Paralympic movement and by the international sports industry.” 

During Sochi 2014, students participated in an observation programme allowing them to assess in detail the complex logistical operations behind the organisation of the Winter Games. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Aleksander Bryantsev, head of education at Sochi 2014. 

IOC President Thomas Bach also hailed the success of the RIOU, saying “There will be many lasting legacies from Sochi 2014, including the RIOU. The Olympic Movement as a whole will benefit from the establishment of the university, as, of course, will Russian sport.”

Dmitry Chernyshenko, President of the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee added “The Russian International Olympic University serves as an example of the significant lasting legacy for Russia after the Games have been hosted in Sochi,” he explains. “It will become the key centre for training a new generation of highly-qualified sports managers in Russia.”