The Singapore F1 Night Race

“The challenges of Singapore’s Marina Bay Street Circuit are well established, but there’s far more complexity to the only Formula One night race than what happens out on the track. In addition to coping with the humidity and duration of the Grand Prix, teams and drivers all operate on European time in order to master the logistical challenges, meaning the surreal routine of going to bed near dawn – and having breakfast in the afternoon…”

Formula One drivers are known to be thrill-seeking. They race multi-million-dollar cars at 375 kilometers per hour, and up to 160 kilometers per hour around corners – to win what can only be known as an adrenalin rush. F1 is an expensive, high-stake sport where roaring engines, screeching tires, spectacular crashes and the chase for the chequered flag make it as exciting for drivers and crews as it is for spectators.

The action on the track is only part of the story. Keeping the wheels turning behind the scenes is the other part, and that’s where ABC Company has played a key role every year since the first Formula One Singapore Grand Prix was held in 2009. Singapore was the first city to host an F1 race at night and it remains one of only a handful of night events on the F1 calendar.

As you would expect, feeding over 80,000 spectators plus support teams, media and security personnel is an enormous logistical challenge. As part of this effort, ABC Company was engaged by F1 to manage the supply and distribution of food and beverages to venues across the city.

Working on a rigid timetable built around each leg of the race, with the added complexity of road closures and increased vehicle and pedestrian traffic, ABC Company’s detailed planning help to ensure that all suppliers, drivers, and other key stakeholders come together like a well-oiled logistics machine.

However, in the latest tendering exercise for the following year’s F1 night race, your company XYZ managed to win the bid away from ABC Company. You have been tasked as the project manager to oversee the food logistics for the event.

Your project sponsor briefed you on the project, and you managed to capture some key salient points during the meeting on 3 May 2020:

Salient points captured on 3 May 2020:

• The F1 night race has not been officially confirmed yet, but it would likely be
  held in the first week of September 2020.
• The event will be a week-long event, lasting 7 days.
• There are eleven key vendors supplying food and beverages for the race,
  including XYZ Company (i.e. a separate department of XYZ Company will also
  be supplying food and beverages for the event).
• The main project objectives are as follows:
  1. To leave a great impression on the event organizers and secure the same job for the 2021 F1 Night Race.
  2. To ensure on-time delivery of food and beverages to all stakeholders involved in the race while maintaining a high level of freshness and quality.
  3. To manage the cost structure to ensure a high level of profitability for the company.
  4. To work closely with all ten external vendors as well as XYZ’s food production division.
  5. To ensure that there will be no food contamination and food hygiene issues.
• The secondary project objectives are as follows:
  1. To ensure that the branding of the XYZ company is visible and prominent as the “logistics provider of choice” for the prestigious event.
  2. To reduce the overall carbon footprint in the food delivery process.
  3. To dispose of food waste in the most economical manner.

• There might be a possibility of inclement weather during the period. This may
  affect transport routes, which would already be reduced by road closures.
• There might be an upswing in visitor numbers as the race would be held in 2020 – which is a major milestone.
• As this is the first time that XYZ Company is undertaking this project, the project sponsor is anticipating many unforeseen risk triggers and hence would like to have a high-level risk assessment matrix.

Questions

(a) In order to ensure that you have full visibility of the project objectives, respond with a DETAILED Project Charter with the following key areas:

(i) Project Description

• This should include a project title.
• Describe the project scope in one or two paragraphs of the summary.

(ii) Project Objectives and relative success criteria

• Define the specific business objectives that correlate to the overall business plan.
• The related success criteria should ideally adhere to the SMART formula (specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable and timely).

(iii) High-Level Requirements

• This should define what the project must accomplish by asking the following questions:
  1. Why are we doing this?
  2. What happens if we do not do this project?
  3. What problems are we trying to solve?
  4. How much time do we have?

(iv) Assumptions

• The assumptions must be defined in line with the project scope.

(v) Constraints (including limits and exclusions)

• List and define all the possible constraints from the project, including the limits of the project as well as what would be excluded from the project scope.

(vi) High-Level Risks

• Apply a high-level risk identification and assessment in order to create a risk matrix that details the key risks and their triggers.

(vii) Summary Milestone Schedule

• Provide a list of Project Management Milestones and Deliverables. Select either a Gantt chart or table form to clearly illustrate the schedule.

(viii) Summary Budget

• Create a simple budget table based on the team’s top-down estimation of the costs involved.

(ix) Project Organisation

• Determine, with rationale, the project structure to be used for this project.
• Demonstrate the possible advantages and disadvantages of your selected project structure.

(b) Based on the teamwork-related tenets of a high-performance team, elaborate in detail FIVE (5) characteristics of a high-performance team and how you, as the project manager, will create and develop such a team for the event.