Win or lose, Poland is learning a lot from organizing the world’s third-largest sporting event

Along with monitoring the progress of stadium construction, PL.2012, the company charged with the preparation of the Euro 2012 football championship in Poland, is eager to know what national teams will reach the championship. This knowledge is essential for proper preparation of infrastructure, said Andrzej Bogucki, national infrastructure manager for PL.2012, at a meeting with the AmCham Infrastructure Committee in May.

“It is important to know what countries we be sending us football fans as visitors,” Bogucki said. “Fans from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia follow their national teams around, while Spaniards prefer to watch their team on television.”

Because German and Dutch fans prefer road transportation, on-time completion of the A2 highway linking Warsaw with Western Europe is especially important. On the other hand, fans from Scandinavia and other more distant countries will fly in, hence the importance of readying airports in the host cities—in addition to Warsaw, the other sites are Poznań, Wrocław and Gdańsk.

Here some problems still need to be solved. When it comes to airports, the biggest challenge is to boost their processing capacity. In Gdańsk and Poznań a new runway needs to be built to allow more airplanes to take off and land. According to Bogucki, the extension project is underway in Gdańsk, but Poznań is late obtaining environmental permission. Terminals in Poznań and Gdańsk have begun projects to increase passenger throughput capacity. Bogucki did not rule out, however, that part of the solution may be temporary terminals set up in containers or tents.

The airport in Warsaw has the capacity to handle the Euro 2012 semifinals, but not the final match. “There are delays in building the southern section of the airport,” Bogucki said. “There is no transportation system around the airport, but there is a railway link being built between the airport and the city center. It looks like it will be delivered on time.”
To help the existing international airport in Warsaw handle the Euro 2012 final, Warsaw is building a new airport in Modlin. The old military airfield there is already listed in the register of airports, and hopes are that by mid-2012 it be fully functional.

But it may not. The situation is much more complex when it comes to installing new air traffic control equipment, such as radars, antennas, and descent path instruments. However, there is kneejerk objection to such elements by local communities, environmental organizations, and often the air force. Because of such concerns, for instance, the approach to Wrocław will be managed by air control traffic controllers located in Poznań. To what extent the Modlin airport will be equipped with modern air traffic control equipment is not yet known.

According to Bogucki, Poland will have transportation alternatives in place in case a volcano eruption grounds air carriers.

With EUR 22 billion to spend on Euro 2012 preparation, PL.2012 is monitoring 370 different investment projects, from construction of stadiums to building road infrastructure, railway links, hotels and other facilities. Contracts for one-fifth of all procurement, in value terms, are still to be awarded.

PL.2012 cooperates with 80 agencies and institutions handling such issues as construction and organization, including security measures, but also the intellectual property rights of the organizer, the Union of European Football Associations.

While the preparations are progressing fine, with no major obstacles, Bogucki said it is thanks to good access to critical information by the monitoring authorities that everything is under control. Information is often hard to obtain, however, because many managers involved in the process treat Euro 2012 not as a business project but as a political project, and are thus reluctant to share information.

With all other aspects of Euro 2012 preparations to some extent up in the air, Poland will deliver on the bottom line: all of the stadiums that are going to host Euro 2012 in Poland will be ready on time. The stadium in Poznań is on schedule and will be ready by the end of this year. Construction of the National Sports Arena in Warsaw is also on schedule. “It is an example of a relatively well-conducted investment project,” Bogucki said. He noted that despite replacement of the contractor in Wroclaw, the stadium there will be ready by October next year. “The new contractor said they will finish the project in 16 months,” Bogucki said.

One of the difficulties Poland faces in having everything in place for Euro 2012 is that when negotiating its contract with the UEFA to co-host the event, Poland took responsibility for some 400 infrastructure projects, in the hope that the projects will all benefit the local communities and Poland in general. The reality is that this responsibility is stretching management capability thin. “If we had to do it over again, our approach would be different,” Bogucki said. “We have identified the key projects for Euro 2012—projects without which the event cannot take place-and there are 40 of them. So we have now been managing around 40 projects that are essential for Euro 2012 and around 200 others projects that, for many different reasons, were classified as Euro 2012 projects although they did not have to be.”

The European Football Championship is the world’s third-largest sporting event, after the World Cup and the Summer Olympics. Bogucki said that has made it fascinating from a professional perspective, working with the UEFA people who were at the heart of organizing the last championship, in 2008. “They are open in sharing specific information about organizing such events as the Euro championship,” Bogucki said. “We have had great opportunities to get some important knowhow about organizing mega-events, because after all they are similar, whether it is Expo, Euro, or some other large-scale event.”

Poland will not have much direct financial benefit from organizing Euro 2012, but UEFA will. Nonetheless, if all goes well and thousands of football fans return home with fond memories of the host country, Poland is bound to benefit from those who will return as tourists for many years to come.