Daily Lesson from Life 02 August 2008

"Youth Olympic Village now located at NTU

Increase in building material costs and tighter completion deadline prompted relocation. -Sat, Aug 02, 2008 AsiaOne

The Singapore Youth Olympic Village that was originally proposed to be built at the National University of Singapore's University Town, or U-Town, will now be relocated to the Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) campus.

Some of the facilities were to be completed by August 2010, as part of Singapore's bid to host the 2010 Youth Olympic Games. Completion of U-Town was also to have been accelerated so that it can be ready for use as the Youth Olympic Village.

But an increase in building material costs fuelled by a sharp escalation in construction demand, coupled with the shorter deadline to complete the Village, have made it difficult for the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee to continue with its original plan.

The alternative site at the NTU has been accepted by the International Olympics Committee."

In life, when we do not plan, we plan to fail.

When we do plan, we may still have to make adjustments and changes as things may not turn out the way we planned it! If we perform a regular review of progress towards the planned goals, we will discover issues and challenges that we can address earlier and still produce a reasonably satisfactory result!

Making decisions are one of the key tasks of leaders. They perform this task by evaluating the scope of the work, the time schedule, and the resources available. The decision made may not be the best but it should be the most appropriate at that time.

The lessons from the relocation of the Youth Olympic Village are:

1. we must plan or else we plan to fail;

2. after we planned, we need to continuously assess the key factors of scope, schedule, and resources available to ensure the plan has a good chance of success;

3. when the regular review and assessment reveal unexpected challenges and we need to change plan, we have to do it decisively.

Leaders' decision will impact a lot of people, exercise that power wisely and consider all angles as much as possible. Once decision is made, we will stick to it unless the ongoing regular review reveal new and better alternatives!