An analysis of benefits realisation and risk for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014

Executive Summary

The 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games presented Glasgow City Council with an ambitious opportunity to develop the local economy, create employment opportunities, enhancing sporting infrastructure, increasing sporting participation (with intentions of establishing a lasting legacy), and fostering regeneration efforts in the East End of Glasgow.

However, the realisation of these benefits encountered significant obstacles, including challenges in quantifying intangible objectives and poor data collection for post-Games analysis. Collaborative efforts with various public institutions helped mitigate potential risks associated with financial and economic factors, highlighting the importance of effective risk management. Despite success in some objectives, such as employment opportunities and sporting infrastructure, there were shortcomings in quantifying objectives and distributing benefits equitably. The Commonwealth Games also delivered unintended impacts on other projects (such as the M74 Completion), emphasising the requirement for comprehensive risk analysis.

Recommendations include enhancing benefits realisation management (such as refining definition methods), improving data collection to enhance analyses of city-wide sporting-events, considering impacts on other regional projects, and prioritising community involvement in regeneration efforts. Embracing these recommendations can lead to more resilient, impactful, and inclusive outcomes for future projects in Glasgow City.

Introduction

In the dynamic environment of project management, organisations often aspire to create as many benefits as possible, despite encountering various constraints (Maylor 2015). This challenge is illustrated by Glasgow City Council’s ambitious objectives surrounding the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. The council’s objectives ranged from enhancing the local economy to fostering neighbourhood regeneration, yet the realisation of these benefits faced notable hurdles, such as quantifying the objectives as well as poor data collection for post-Games analysis (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Whilst approaching the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow City Council worked in partnership with many organisations, such as the Auditor General for Scotland, the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland, to name a few. These partnerships were used to decrease risk for particular objectives, such as financial risk involved in infrastructure and economic risk involved in large employers temporarily moving into the region (McCartney et al. 2010a; Auditor General 2012; Morrison and Thompson 2018), highlighting the importance of risk management.

The East End regeneration efforts also highlight the important of community involvement and behaviour of key institutions as projects progress, despite heightened tensions (Egan et al. 2015; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Considering all this, this report then presents recommendations for Glasgow City Council to improve benefits realisation and risk management for enhancing future projects.

Benefits Realisation

Whilst an organisation often desire to create as many benefits as possible from a project or programme, various constraints such as financial limitations, staffing availability, technological barriers, or other factors, may impede the realisation of benefits (Maylor 2010).

In the case of Glasgow City Council, a whole suite of benefits were selected to stem from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014. These included developing the local economy and creating employment opportunities, enhancing sporting infrastructure, increasing sporting participation (with intensions of establishing a lasting legacy), and fostering regeneration efforts in the East End of Glasgow (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Whilst certain objectives are clearly defined, such as creating employment opportunities and increasing participation, other objectives pose challenges in terms of quantifying and require bespoke methodologies to assess the extend to which Glasgow City Council has achieved its aims. Glasgow City Council collaborated with Skills Development Scotland to develop a strategy aimed at creating employment opportunities. This strategy targeted a wide range of demographics, including school leavers, the unemployed, individuals in further and higher education, and others in economically inactive groups (Scottish Government 2015). However, despite efforts to ensure equitable distribution of opportunities, Glasgow City Council fell short in providing employment for certain groups beyond young people, such as veterans or individuals with disabilities (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Glasgow City Council also targeted sporting participation as an area for improvement by inviting various organisations from across Glasgow, including private entities, public institutions, and charitable organisations, to invest in sports within the city. (Morrison and Thompson 2018). In preparation for the Commonwealth Games, the council conducted analyses of previous games and similar city-wide sporting-events to establish a benchmark for expected outcomes in sporting participation. Initially, these analyses suggested that major sporting-events tended to boost participation rates (Scottish Government 2015). However, subsequent data analysis revealed that the relationship between sporting-events and increased sporting participation long term is lacking literature, and that post-Games data was found to inconclusive due to narrow evidence base (Health and Sport Committee 2017; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

To quantify the benefits associated with the enhancement of sporting infrastructure, Glasgow City Council used a simplified benefit mapping technique to establish targets for the Commonwealth Games (Morrison and Thompson 2018). As Maylor (2015) describes, benefit mapping is technique that is particularly valuable for defining difficult to quantify benefits and involves selecting desired outcomes and deciding upon methods that are expected to realise these outcomes.

For the enhancement of sporting infrastructure, venues were chosen through the Glasgow City Council procurement hub which allowed the council to identify venues for refurbishment as well as smaller organisations interested in supporting additional activities and events for the Commonwealth Games (Scottish Government 2015). Whilst the confirmation of a new sporting legacy is yet to be confirmed, new sporting infrastructure continues to be utilised by local communities and its continued use is likely to contribute to the success of other projects undertaken by various organisations (Clark and Kearns 2016; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Furthermore, Glasgow City Council employed a combination of the previous techniques (benchmarking and benefit mapping) which initially allowed the understanding of the economic impacts of major sporting-events on other cities. This initial understanding enabled economists within the organisation to develop a model for forecasting the increase in Gross Value Added (GVA), an economic indicator for output or productivity within a data zone (Office for National Statistics 2024). Subsequently, this allowed Glasgow City Council to identify potential methods for realising these targets (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

This benefit mapping approach supported the business case for Glasgow City Council tendering the bid to host the sporting-event (Auditor General 2012; Scottish Government 2015; Morrison and Thompson 2018). Using Glasgow City Council’s targets of heightened GVA, increased tier 1 contracts for local SMEs, as well as expanded employment opportunities, many sources express confidence that these benefits were indeed realised (Scottish Government 2015; Clark and Kearns 2016; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Whilst not initially considered during the planning stages of the Commonwealth Games, such events can have unintended impacts on other projects or programmes in the area, as illustrated by the case of the M74 Completion in Glasgow City. As the project progressed, it began to lose support from key stakeholders, such as residents in the area, Glasgow City Council, and the Scottish Government (Scottish Government 2015; Morrison and Thompson 2018). However, once the bid for the Commonwealth Games was confirmed, the city experienced a surge in investment, making the area more attractive and heightening prospects for financial gain, often referred to as the ‘Halo Effect’ (Gogishvili 2021).

Subsequently, with renewed political will for the motorway completion, the Commonwealth Games organisers were able to anticipate increased visitor numbers enabled by improved access and thus, led to adjustments in plans for mitigation of potential disruptions (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Risk Analysis        

Maylor (2015) defines risk as the potential disruption in a project introducing delays, increased costs, or even harm. Therefore, it is crucial for an organisation to consider and understand potential risks and effectively manage them to prevent project setbacks. Some common risks include financial challenges, delays, and poor performance (Maylor 2015).

However, the risks associated with large sporting-events are much more far reaching and carry the potential to be significantly more disruptive to cities, with the Commonwealth Games contain financial risks, economic risks, and risks relating to the regeneration developments in the East End of Glasgow City (Scottish Government 2015).

To mitigate the potential financial risks associated with hosting the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow City Council worked in partnership with the Auditor General for Scotland and the Scottish Government. Together, they developed financial models aimed at forecasting the Games’ impacts on Glasgow City. These models contains elements such as gross expenditure budget, probable outturn, and variance in budgets (John Lyle 2013). Such models are particularly valuable as they enable Glasgow City Council to comprehend their budget and anticipate the costs for potential disruptions to renovations, time delays, and other risks.

However, despite these measures, disruptions and funding pauses occurred due to the Great Financial Crisis preceding the Commonwealth Games. Despite the disruption the pause in both private and public sector investment in the Commonwealth Games and subsequent minor delays in development and renovation of the venues, these delays did not seriously impact project end dates and venues were delivered on target (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Glasgow City Council’s economists also focused on analysing and modelling the economic impacts of hosting the Commonwealth Games. As highlighted by both McCartney et al. (2010a) and the Scottish Government (2015), there were genuine concerns regarding inflationary pressures that Glasgow City may face during such a large sporting-event, as other cities, such as Barcelona, Atlanta and other hosts of large sporting-events, experienced pressures leading up to, during, and shortly after the games.

Common models for economic appraisal include Shapiro-Stiglitz and the Three-Equation models (Romer 2012; Carlin and Soskice 2015), which enable the linkage of labour market tightness (a measure of labour demand and labour supply) to inflationary pressures.

Approaching the Commonwealth Games, and through employment programmes targeting mostly unemployed demographics, labour market was anticipated to tighten due to the ‘fishing out’ effect, and as vacancies increased elsewhere in Glasgow City and surrounding local authorities as businesses geared up to increase operations for the Games (particularly in tourism sectors) there was concern that the increase in labour market tightness would temporarily place upwards pressure on wages in the short- to medium-run leading to inflationary pressures in the region (Scottish Government 2015). Which was particularly risky as cities do not possess the appropriate monetary policy tools to curb inflation, and central banks, who typically make policy for an entire country, would struggle to target a city (Carlin and Soskice 2015). However, Morrison and Thompson (2018) argue that the use of the volunteer-model for attracting labour to the Commonwealth Games, along with the distribution of employment opportunities, was sufficient to prevent labour-market based inflationary pressures.

The East End regeneration project also posed significant risks, particularly to the reputation of Glasgow City Council. This area of Glasgow City was chosen to develop the Athlete’s Village and would later become part of the city’s housing stock for, containing both private and social housing. Additionally, new sports venues were developed in the area to promote local sports participation (Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Whilst the regeneration is now deemed to have a positive long-run impact, with new opportunities in the area, there is also a case for reputation damage during this regeneration process (Egan et al. 2015; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

As Egan et al. (2015) explore, issues emerged during the process, particularly concerned community relocation before the demolition of previous housing stock which created tension between the residents in the area and Glasgow City Council as communities perceived the nature of how the council behaved as unfair.

This perception was made particularly worse as residents felt that the developments were imposed on the area without consent, and later became a threat to community empowerment as construction started (McCartney 2010b). Those previously in the area faced challenges returning to their communities as the housing stock that was predominately social housing, now featured more mixed tenure with increased private properties (Egan et al. 2015; Morrison and Thompson 2018).

Recommendations

To enhance benefits realisation and mitigate risks for future city-wide sporting-events, Glasgow City Council should focus on several key areas based on the previous analysis.

Firstly, the council should focus on enhancing its capacity for benefits realisation management. This involves refining definitions of less tangible benefits (such as the council’s aim of improved sporting legacy), thereby improving current methods and ensuring, for example, a more equitable distribution of employment opportunities to support economically disadvantaged groups.

Secondly, improved data collection is essential for conducting robust statistical and causal investigations of events, but particularly major city-wide sporting-events. This not only strengthens business and economic cases for hosting such events, but also contributes to advancing research in sporting event planning and management.

Thirdly, while potentially challenging and outwith the capabilities of a local authority, consideration for impacts of these events on other projects within the region can prove beneficial. This approach would lead to more comprehensive benefit and risk analysis and management.

Lastly, Glasgow City Council must prioritise community involvement and empowerment in future regeneration projects to avoid tension and reputational damage experienced during the East End regeneration projects. By placing community engagement at the forefront, regeneration efforts are likely to proceed smoothly without major opposition.

Conclusion

The 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games serve as a prime example of the delicate balance between striving for benefits realisation and navigating the environment of inherent risks of city-wide sporting events. Whilst the Games highlight effective methods for identifying and managing benefits, there are notable areas for improvement, such as properly distributing employment opportunities in line with objectives, the refinement of pre- and post-Games (and during) data collection allowing for more effective statistical and causal investigations, and the behaviour of Glasgow City Council during neighbourhood regeneration projects. By embracing these recommendations, Glasgow City Council has the opportunity to deliver more resilient, impactful, and inclusive outcomes. 

References

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