Custom «Chelsea FC Project» Essay Paper

Chelsea Football Club Overview

Chelsea FC which was known as “The Pensioners” but currently it is termed as “The Blues” is a football club for professional players and it operates in West London. The club was established in the year 1905 and it plays in Premier League. The club has spent most of its history in top rank in the English football (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012). Chelsea FC is among the most celebrated Association Football Clubs in the UK and it has a long, distinctive as well as idiosyncratic history, in addition it is experienced in both lows and highs of this football game. Since the early years as butt of music-hall joke due to its lack of achievement, to becoming 1954-55 Champions after the revamp. From sensational, talented as well as flamboyant team that emerged in the swinging London during mid-1960s to placing the club on top of the football map for the record, to financial as well as on-pitch woes which roughly forced the club extinction in early years of 1980s. From the club revival later in mid-1980s which returned it to its stable position, to cosmopolitan revitalization of late-1990s that saw it go for honours once more, to its takeover in the year 2003 that contributed to present status of football game domination (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

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The Stadium

The club’s football stadium, Stamford Bridge borders Chelsea and Fulham, in London Borough of the Hammersmith together with Fulham which is the home of Chelsea FC.  The club’s stadium is situated in the well-known Moore Park Estate which is also termed as Walham Green. The club’s supporters nicknamed the place “The Bridge.” The stadium currently can hold a capacity of 42,055, making the stadium eighth largest stadium in Premier League (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

The stadium was opened in the year 1877 as London Athletics Club home and was exclusively used for that reason until year 1904, when it was leased to brothers Joseph and Gus Mears who sought to stage high-status professional matches. But before this the stadium hosted World Championship in 1898. Stamford Bridge was mainly constructed as athletics track plus the pitch was constructed at the centre of running track. Stamford Bridge official capacity was almost 100,000 making it second largest stadium in England. The stadium hosted final for first 3 years following World War I and it was traded with Wembley (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

In the year 1930, another terrace was constructed on south side to cater for standing spectators and it was only roofed partly and it was known as “The shed.” “The Shed” was the favourite spot for loudest as well as die-hard support but it was demolished in the year 1994 (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012). In year 1939, two small storied North Stands were constructed including seats. This spot was intended to distance the full northern end, however the World War II outbreak and aftermath forced the club to keep a small stand. It was later demolished as traded with open terracing in 1975 for the standing supporters. In 1964-65, the West Stand for the seating supporters was constructed to substitute terracing on west side. In 1998 the aged West Stand was reconstructed to present West Stand (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

The current East Stand was constructed in the year 1973, initially planned for start of the complete redevelopment of stadium that was later abandoned when the club was exposed into financial hardships. The building expenses of East Stand increased to uncontrollable level after the shortage of building materials and builders strike and combined with various factors, saw Chelsea FC into decline. East Stand in actual fact carries on with its 1973 three-tiered cantilevered appearance, but currently it has undergone refurbishment and modernization (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

During the redevelopment of Stamford Bridge in Ken Bates period, various features were included that is apartments, hotels, restaurants, bars, Chelsea Megastore and Chelsea World of Sport. The main aim of these addition features was to add additional revenue in order to support football business side, however these facilities were less booming than expected and it became a burden to the club due to the debt used to fund them. And the “Chelsea Village” was dropped later and concentrated on football club (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).   

The Future

Chelsea FC is planning to expand its Stamford Bridge ground in order to carry a capacity of approximately 55,000 seats, but its position in the heavily built-up section of the inner London next to the main road as well as 2 railway lines making the expansion very hard. The dispersion of extra 13,000 fans in residential roads, of Moore Park Estate, is not desirable and Chelsea is looking for solutions (Oleole.com, 2012). The club is focusing on moving from the Stamford Bridge to many locations, including White City, Earls Court Exhibition Centre, Imperial Road Gasworks, Chelsea Barracks and Battersea Power Station. In addition, as a result of Chelsea Pitch Owners terms, the club will have to renounce its name “Chelsea Football Club” if it moves from the Stamford Bridge. And for these reasons that why I chose Chelsea FC has the main company and I will mainly focus on the proposed stadium expansion (Oleole.com, 2012: Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Comparative Cases

Apart from Chelsea FC expansion plan for its stadium, there are other clubs which are now consider expansion and some have already started they include Mississippi State football and Boise State Stadium both if which are for America football, and already expanded Green Point (Cape Town) Stadium and expansion of Los Cármenes Stadium (Granada) among others. For the purpose of this research we are only going to consider English football expansion stadium thus in this case only Cape Town stadium and Los Cármenes Stadium expansion will be considered.

Case of Green Point (Cape Town) Stadium

FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 made South Africa, Green Point Stadium to be expended to the current status. The stadium initially had capacity of 52,000 seats and the NUSSLI was order to add 13,000 seats in order to have a total capacity of 65,000. The expansion of the stadium had to conform to high security standards issued by FIFA with no comfort sacrifice. For that expansion NUSSLI applied the advanced model of NT System having a row depth of 800 mm that had been particularly developed for Cape Town project. The removable extension was installed easily into progression of the existing rows (Nussli.us, 2010).

After the event, the seats were uninstalled again. The lately available area may currently be utilized as needed, for instance as the hospitality area, Sky Boxes installation. The organization of logistic required superior degree of exactness as well as reliability: materials of approximately 450 tons were shipped from various regions in the world and sent to Cape Town and they arrived on time (Nussli.us, 2010). The following figure shows Cape Town extension of the stadium.

The stadium capacity was reduced in order to be able to cater for many other games like rugby or activities like music concerts after 2010 FIFA World Cup. The stadium also features medical, hospitality suites, banqueting, training, and conferencing facilities (Warby, 2008).

The stadium was constructed at a cost of R4.4 billion or USD 600 million or £415 million. The architects were Louis Karol Architects, GMP Architects and Point Architects while the general contractor was Murray and Roberts/WBHO. The current field dimension is 290 x 265 x 48 m (Capetownmagazine.com, 2009).

Case of Los Cármenes Stadium (Granada)

Granada Eventos Globales S.A. (GEGSA) commissioned NUSSLI to extend Spanish Football Club Granada CF stadium so as to increase the stadium’s capacity for the first division match that will occur in 2011-2012 season (Nussli.us, 2011). In about 16 days, NUSSLI team made up of 14 individuals built six impermanent grandstands having an overall capacity of 3,088 extra seats. The grandstands were assembled in empty parts of existing stands that in addition with need to attain maximum figure of the new seats probable, which implied a considerable challenge for the NUSSLI. The stadium needed various levels as well as extra calculations were needed so as to evaluate the utmost load which would be sustained by the already existing structure. Additionally, this project needed the utilization of the non-standardized materials. Throughout construction, materials weighing 260 tons were transported from several NUSSLI headquarters and used (Nussli.us, 2011). The following figure shows Los Cármenes Stadium extension.

The following section discusses the project management processes that the Chelsea FC must go through in order to complete this project.

Project Management Processes for Chelsea FC Project

In Chelsea FC project like any other project, every project process explains the procedures the project manager would take to manage a constituent of the project. Therefore, in order to offer an inclusive set of project processes, for all project management processes the project managers in the Chelsea FC would have to discover an example that provides them an absolute practical exemplar of the Chelsea FC project process. Managers not just in soccer but in every sport such as American football, basketball and rugby are offered expectations with the holders, team associates plus fans look forward to excellent results. Therefore, this puts a lot of pressure on sports managers to perform; hence this got me judgment concerning the similarities amid project managers and sport managers.  All managers of the soccer deal with their reasonable share of malfunction, for instances, Jose Mourinho is deemed to be one of the supreme managers within the world of soccer, managing thriving teams like “Porto, Chelsea and Real Madrid” (chelseafc.com, 2012).

Nevertheless, Mourihno was sacked from Chelsea FC in the year 2007 due to the failure of champion league which was a major project with Chelsea. The prototype is steady within the world of soccer, Brian Clough is valued as one of the best managers who certainly not directed the English-soccer team, yet managed for only forty four days at “Leeds United, and later he would go ahead to run Nottingham Forest to two European cup successes, the premier honour in European club football”. Therefore, project managers have to learn from their previous negatives experience and apply what they have well-read to fresh projects. For example, Brian Clough did not succeed in Leeds United but fruitfully carried on to turn out to be one of the greatest managers in England. Consequently, project managers have to persistently learn, expand and mature to grow to be superior project managers, so sports managers are aware what it entails to make a project victorious (chelseafc.com, 2012).   

There is variety of other elements to a project that the project management manager aids to control, these involves issues, documents, notes, budget and resources availability. The general goals of project managers are to plan, purchase soccer kits, implemented, track and complete project.  Therefore, the senior manager of Chelsea FC project at perform would be responsible for the management and the delivery of multiple projects for a wide range of customers based on the soccer world, and in order to delivery this project successful the project manager should have to put in place the following essential project management processes such as time management process, cost management process, risk management process, procurement management process, and change management process.

Risk Management Process

This a process which will help the project manager to recognize, reassess, take the edge off and scrutinize project risks more efficiently. It also illustrates the responsibilities and functions of every team member when participating in project risk management.  All project involve a certain extent of risk, the basis is that the project manager would have to fix amount of time, budget and resources available to accomplish a set project (Adams, 2012). How Chelsea FC project manager would manage this risk would establish the level of accomplishment. Implementations of risk management process in the Chelsea FC project the manager would be able to administer risks through previous risk recognition, quantification and alleviation.

A superior way to consider of risk management is to deem it as a well-versed decision-making processes which seek out to make certainty from uncertainty.  This may also be perceived as a type of applied thinking which would aid project manager to build up the wisdom to address hard circumstances and uncertainties in future incidents. Although it would not avoid freak snow situations from coercing managers to cancel their festive marquee incident as Chelsea Football Club has only had to do, for not implementing effective risk management strategy, this may lead in to a serious disaster for happening managers and are, with no doubt, imperative area of the planning processes.   

The highlight on risk management process in the incident area has expanded with the rising specialization and complexity of service supply. The Chelsea FC project managers operate as coordinators of all activities taking place in project, but frequently know little concerning the risks related to each part and the level that the project managers would use understands their task plus have the right systems in place to control risks (Adam 2012).

Cost Management Process

This process helps the Chelsea FC project manager to manage their project expenditure, and describes how to document the expenses by using expense forms and then execute an expense approval procedure. It also illustrates how the project manager may up-date the project plan with their expenditure information, to assist the manager to always keen on the overall project expenses. The cost management roles concentrate on facilitating the project to be accomplished cost-effectively and in a manner that optimizes both values and short to long terms yield to customers plus stakeholders. Thus, cost control diminishes risks and increases values.

Management in every industry is footed on end results.  Soccer managers have increased pressure of thousands of loyal, pass on hard supporters anticipating excellent results, therefore sport managers have to make sure that they thrive. This may entail purchasing a fresh player, a fresh member of back-room. Project managers have to meet expectations; about fifty seven per cent of organizations experience at least one unsuccessful project every year. This leads into huge expenditure for companies, rising pressure for the project manger to assure the project be successful. Just like sport managers, the project managers can put into practice various techniques to make sure the project is an achievement. This might engage executing “project management software” to aid the team control projects with templates, dashboards, reporting to raise visibility plus make sure appropriate victorious project.

For the case of Chelsea FC, club has made comprehensible for all times that its first choice is to remain at Stamford Bridge if it is possible, nonetheless also explains that it should enlarge capability to meet demand, broaden access, maintain admission costs at a suitable stage and advance the fans match day experience. This would enable the club to increase its revenue to assist meet the requirements of Financial Fair Play regulations of UEFA that are currently in force.  Therefore, the project manager perceived this in details at the potential to enhance capability at Stamford Bridge. 

Quality Management Process

Chelsea FC is one of top football clubs in Britain; it has turn out to be the first in the world to score with ISO9000. This club has attained its greatest league position in twenty nine years plus qualified for the “European champions League” has attained the ISO9002 qualifications of quality systems functioned by its merchandising company “Chelsea village merchandising” is in charge for more than three hundred thousand commodities lines for Chelsea supporters. Commodities sort from fashion wear and replica kits to frying pans, gardens gnome and also an MG vehicle, every trademarked with the Chelsea colour and logo. The managing director, Chris Manson of Chelsea Village Merchandising stated that it is very exciting that the Chelsea FC is the first football club in the globe to attain this accolade that is the main key to the today’s market quality success (chelseainvestco.com, 2012)

Service

The Chelsea FC successful registration to ISO9002 illustrates that it meet worldwide quality standards, offering more assurance that the followers of Chelsea FC would carry on to obtain the best probable service as it company develops.  To achieve ISO9002 certifications by British Standards Institution (BSI), Chelsea recognized its quality requirements, set up a quality programme, advance quality manual, qualified staffs to employ the quality programme and scrutinized its use and efficiency. The project manager of Chelsea FC stated that the company just wanted to demonstrate that it management systems have the capability to meet the customer expectations (British Standards Institutions, 2012).

Time Management Process

This process enables the project manager of Chelsea FC to easily scrutinize and manage time spent on the project. The project manager would be capable to make processes for carrying out timesheets, footage timesheet information and achievement a general outlook of the status of the Chelsea FC club project. Therefore, the project manager in Chelsea FC must make sure that the time of the project is well timely.

Procurement Management Process

This process enables the project manager to officially receive, examine and endorse all service and product that suppliers offer for the company. The Chelsea FC project manager may employ that information to endorse the imbursement of supplier invoices, therefore hiring the supplier is one thing and then to manage that supplier and ensure that they deliver everything that the organization have contracted them to provide is another thing.  The procurement department of Chelsea FC club is accountable for conserving and defending the monetary resources of the city by making sure that the process for procuring products and services is carried out in a reasonable, competitive and translucent way using goal standards for the assortment and sellers that allows for reasonable, unbiased and standardized bidding contract expansion and awarding processes.

Process Reduction

The project management processes in the organization involves the steps and strategies needed to make products and services. The project is susceptible to issues like budgeting, productivity and unanticipated situations. Therefore, if the project does not reduce the disadvantages related to the project the Chelsea FC is about to undertake, the project might not succeed to make fresh services and goods to their customers, wasting resources and time of workers and the organization (managerprojectsonsharepoint.com, 2010).

Step 1

The project manager is supposed to identify the shortcomings of the project that might face. In the project no one can presume that everybody is aware the possible issues and shortcomings that might affect the project. In addition, some of the team members in Chelsea FC may think of project shortcomings, which others do no, therefore the manager is suppose to ask all members of the team to write down their thoughts concerning the potential difficulties the project encounters. Once everybody has listed down a file of shortcomings, compile all of these shortcomings on a whiteboard or file so everybody may see them.

Step 2

Level the like-hood which every shortcoming may happen and concentrate on the most possible shortcomings. The team members of Chelsea FC likely would create a long, comprehensive list of project shortcomings, but just a few of them are likely to affect the project significantly. For instances, cost and time restrictions may be major threats to the project, for example if the Chelsea FC project manager knows the time is short, then make it a top main concern on the shortcomings list. 

Step 3

Create a plan to deal with and lessen each shortcoming for example, if the Chelsea FC knows the time is short to finish the project, the manager should speak with team members concerning how to achieve more task done in a shorter period of time. Perhaps every member must have more than single job on which to concentrate to save time, and on the other hand if the budget is tight for the project the manager should find a way to save funds in each stage of the project.  The project manager may also set certain triggers that implement the plans for reducing shortcoming, for instances if the project’s financial plan dips below a certain level, the manager endorse emergency cost cutting measures in order for a project to be cost effective.  

Step 4

Finally, the project manager should assign some members of the team to concentrate on project management process, therefore the team members serve as a steady monitor of the project’s advancement.  The team members may scrutinize the project capability at various points during the project to ensure that the Chelsea FC is countering project management processes, for example, if the project runs out of cash the team members may request to have a meeting and talk about the crisis with other team members. 

The above sub-sections describe the process that the club’s project will go through in order to achieve its goal of an expanded stadium. Therefore, in order to make sure these processes are carried out the project must have a design, financing and logistics among other things which are discussed in the following section.   

Business Plan

Essential Facts

The Stamford Bridge is on 11.9 acres piece of land in the central London. The land is sufficient for the present capacity of 41,837 seats, it is normally accepted by the stadium architects as well as by the construction firms that the new capacity, 60,000 seats would need about 18-20 acres piece of land in a rectangular or largely square shape. The stadium is located in a congested and sensitive region of London. It is normally surrounded by two conservation parts to East and south of stadium, a considerable number of the locally placed buildings nearby and to the east Brompton Cemetery that includes a number of Grade 1 monuments (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

In addition, Stamford Bridge is bounded by the railway lines to the east and north and is a atypical stadium that has three major exits. The three gates, Britannia Gate, Bovril Gate and Stamford Gate do have a joint width of around 50 metres. According to Green Guide’s Fourth Edition for the people flows in the stadium, the exits are presently just huge enough to make sure that all the 41,837 spectators are able to leave Stamford Bridge within required emergency time (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Green Guide reports sets out guidance that is followed for the purpose of safety at the stadium and is also the guidance which licensing authority may apply as the part of issuing license for main sport venue. But since its upgrading in the year 2001, the Fifth Edition of the Green Guide was issued in 2008. Therefore, if the stadium was to be expanded, the present ingress routes will not be enough. This implies that any considerable change to Stamford Bridge capacity or design will need the Chelsea FC will have to look for on third ingress width that is extra 16 metres around the stadium. This would require either looking for extra exits or widening all or one of the existing exits (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

In a business perspective, it is vital to keep in mind that, the current capacity of 41,837 ranks Chelsea 30^th in present European club table of stadia. With various clubs planning to expand their capacities in Europe and in other regions in the world, Chelsea FC is probably going to drop down more in the time to come. The current stadium’s capacity also has more limitations as a result of the TV demands. Take for instance, for particular matches of the Champions League of at least 10% of capacity is used in order to contain TV outside the broadcasting facilities, implying that on a number of nights Chelsea normally has available seats of not more than 38,000 (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

With about 5,000 seats for the corporate hospitality as well as capacity of about 19,000 which is less that Emirate Stadium as well as about 34,000 less that of Old Trafford, Chelsea FC makes around £41 million less than the Manchester United in each season as a match day income. But Chelsea presently ranks number six in Europe in terms of turnover, which is a significant accomplishment given the stadium’s limited capacity, which is motivated by the broadcasting rights, occupancy levels, commercial operations as well as by other events at the stadium. The performance is also influences by the fee charged which is the highest in Premier League (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Consultants

The consultants that will assist in assessment of stadium for expansion purposes include Political consultancy (London Communications Agency), architects (AFL), planning (CB Richard Ellis) and safety and transport (Steer Davies Gleave). These companies have an experience with the club because they have been working together for years (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

New Capacity

The above consultants and architects have evaluated the current Stamford Bridge. They have reviewed many probable designs for the new proposed expansion and recommended an elliptical-shaped stadium to be an efficient design for the stadium based on the current site of Stamford Bridge. The design is similar to the one of Emirates Stadium and allowing for regulation-required fifteen metres concourse around Stamford Bridge, thus this type of stadium cannot fit in the present location (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

However, it can only fit on area surrounded by railway lines as well as Fulham Road, but decking could have required over railway lines for the stadium emergency and construction and the normal ingress and concourse would be around Fulham Road, meaning that the club will have to acquire as well as demolish all the buildings and homes along frontage of Fulham Road.  Additionally, the club will have to buy considerable extra land, including offices, homes among others (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Logistical, Financial, Design and Planning

The design of the stadium surrounded by conservation sites and homes is significant with this area water table being quite high, capability of digging down as well as setting stadium lower than the grade is loaded (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

The project is estimated to cost more than £600 million including acquisition of land, properties, demolition, planning expenses, ingress, design and building among others. In terms of logistic additions of 18,000 spectators are considerable and an expert in the people movement and transport are is looking at a possibility of handling at least 40% of present transport network (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Chelsea will require additional 50 metres as exit width for emergency ingress of the 60,000 capacity and exiting onto Fulham Road was unlikely particularly because Fulham Broadway Tube Station is currently at its full capacity (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

The planning will have several effects to the stakeholders which include; first, conservation site on south-side will have to be redrawn and reduced, second, listed buildings in the locality around conservation sites will need to be demolished. Third, conservation area along railway lines will have to be downgraded and local authority will have to purchase the homes that will be affected by expansion. The above implications are for a 60,000 capacity as well as 55,000 seats but in the later will result to reduction in building cost of £25 million as well as reduced turnover in future (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

Expanding Matthew Harding and Shed end stands will be very expensive. It is estimated that about £177m will be used in acquisition of land, properties, design, building and demolition among others in building Matthew Harding and £98m for Shed End. The expenses per cost will be more than £20,000 on average while according to incremental income the payback period will be about 25 years with a useful life of 50 years and 100% occupancy implying that return rate is 2.8%. The estimated increase of net revenue per year will be £11 from both stands. Jointly the stands revenue will be less hypothetically than construction financing cost (Chelseafc.com, 2012).

However, expanding this stadium to around 60,000 seats the club will be faced with many challenges. The expenses for every seat during expansion are actually very high. But the useful life of the capacity will be able to cover cost and earn some returns to the company. The reduction of financing cost will be beneficial to the club since the debt will be paid on time.

Miscellaneous

Since the current expansion program will increase the capacity to around 60,000 seats, this does not mean that the Stamford Bridge after expansion will be able to accommodate higher capacity but at least the capacity will be able to increase the current turnover. Thus this capacity may also be increased further in the future. As a result of expansion of the current capacity the club will consider revising the fees charged to the spectators in order to comply with rules of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play that are currently in force. Since the current Stamford Bridge site is small its expansion will affect many stakeholders in the future this means that in case of any other expansion in future the club will consider moving to another region.