PLATO helps Athens win gold: Olympic Games knowledge modeling for organizational change and resource management

Planning, designing, and implementing systems to support venue operations at the Olympic Games is complicated. The organizing committees must create designs that result in reliable, high-quality venue operations at reasonable cost. The organizational backdrop is unique. The organizing committee has a limited lifetime, it has no organizational memory, any learning disappears with its dissolution, and during its lifetime it must change rapidly from a function-oriented entity to a process-oriented one. The Athens 2004 Olympic Games Organizing Committee (ATHOC) used innovative techniques from management science, systems engineering, and information technology to change the planning, design, and operation of venues. We developed the Process Logistics Advanced Technical Optimization (PLATO) approach for the games. In the PLATO project, we developed a systematic process for planning and designing venue operations by using knowledge modeling and resource-management techniques and tools. We developed a rich library of models that is directly transferable to future Olympic organizing committees and other sports-oriented events. The direct financial benefit to ATHOC was the reduction of the costs of managing venue operations by over $69.7 million. The success of the games raised Greece's international profile in terms of capabilities in managing large and complex projects which, in the medium to long term, will yield financial, political, and social benefits. Internationally, the PLATO legacy of its Olympics knowledge base will enable future organizers of large-scale events to reuse and customize the knowledge to gain benefits and reduce the financial burdens on governments and society.