Cut Rework Upstream and Return Part of the Savings to Athletes
A familiar operational failure looks like this: a temporary team is assembled, completed work comes back for revision, people are pulled back into tasks they thought were finished, and last-minute changes push everyone into overtime.
The obvious response is often, “We need more people.”
Sometimes that is true. But when the real causes are unclear decisions, duplicated checks, missing handoffs, late changes, and approval delays, adding people does not remove the problem.
It can simply make the same disorder more expensive.
The most frustrating outcome is when the athlete at the center of the event receives almost none of the value created by that extra spending.
Athletes compete. Staff stay late. Contractors bill more. Coordination meetings multiply.
If the main things that grow are overtime bills and meeting time, the operating model is broken.
1. Overtime Is Usually a Symptom
The important question is what happened hours, days, or weeks before the overtime.
Common causes include:
- production starting before requirements are stable;
- no clear final decision-maker;
- several groups checking the same issue separately;
- changes not reaching everyone at the same time;
- finished work being reopened;
- last-minute requests carrying no visible cost.
Research on construction projects repeatedly identifies poor coordination, weak communication, errors and omissions, and stakeholder-driven changes as important causes of rework.[1][2]
Construction is not sports operations. The evidence should not be copied mechanically across industries.
But the mechanism is useful: upstream uncertainty and change create downstream rework, delay, and cost.
2. Temporary Teams Create Coordination Load
Adding people adds capacity, but it also adds handoffs, explanations, approval paths, and communication links.
A team that grows from 5 to 10 people does not automatically make its effective capacity 2× as large.
Short-term staff, returning staff, and people who do not know the earlier decisions all require context to be rebuilt.
That creates a hidden coordination tax.
The bad loop is simple:
busy
→ add people
→ add explanations and checks
→ become even busier.
3. Do Not Treat Overtime as Free Capacity
Another trap is the idea that if the work cannot be finished in 8 hours, you can work 10, and if 10 is not enough, you can work 12.
Pencavel’s analysis of historical factory data found a nonlinear relationship between hours and output: beyond a range, additional hours produced diminishing increases in output.[3]
The data came from wartime munitions production, not modern sports events, so there is no universal hour threshold to import.
The transferable point is narrower:
1 hour of overtime is not necessarily 1 hour of useful capacity.
If tired staff make decisions at night that must be corrected the next morning, those 2 hours may be less “progress” than a reservation for tomorrow’s rework.
4. Fix the Upstream Process First
Before pressuring the event team to move faster, improve the system feeding work into it.
1. Set a change cutoff
Changes after the cutoff should be limited to genuine emergencies, safety issues, legal requirements, or serious quality problems.
2. Create one final decision point
Many people can provide input. Final approval should have one clear owner.
3. Put a cost on late changes
Record added hours, contractor costs, and schedule effects.
This is not about punishing the requester. It makes the trade-off visible.
4. Track rework causes
Do not record only overtime. Record why work had to be repeated.
5. Standardize handoffs
Keep decisions, open issues, owners, deadlines, and change history in one place.
6. Protect contingency time
Contingency should absorb real event risk, not indecision that was pushed downstream.
5. Return Part of Verified Savings to Athletes
Efficiency is more meaningful when it changes who benefits.
Suppose an operation cuts ¥1,000,000 in rework costs and the only result is that company profit rises by ¥1,000,000. From an athlete’s point of view, almost nothing has changed.
A better design can earmark part of verified savings for athlete-facing value.
That can mean:
- prize money or appearance fees;
- performance bonuses;
- better travel and accommodation;
- recovery time;
- medical and rehabilitation support;
- training environments;
- coaching, analysis, or equipment;
- athlete-controlled support budgets.
Sports labor-market research shows that institutional arrangements affect how economic rents are distributed between athletes and owners or operators.[4][5]
So growth in revenue alone does not answer the important question.
Who receives the value created by the system?
6. This Is Not an Attack on Support Staff
Sports do not happen through athletes alone.
Operations, production, officiating, medical teams, security, broadcasting, sales, communications, venues, and logistics all create real value.
The problem is not that surrounding organizations earn money.
The problem is when avoidable rework and coordination failure are allowed to become a permanent cost center.
Pay for necessary work.
Pay necessary people.
Remove avoidable upstream waste.
Those principles are compatible.
7. Measure More Than Overtime
Useful measures include:
- total labor hours;
- overtime hours;
- rework hours;
- number of late changes;
- number of reopened tasks;
- incremental contractor cost;
- unresolved issues close to event time;
- direct athlete-support spending;
- verified savings from reduced rework;
- share of those savings returned to athletes.
A simple model is:
Rework cost = repeated labor hours × loaded labor rate + incremental external costs + change-related costs
Then:
Athlete return = verified savings × pre-agreed return rate
This creates a direct connection between better operations and better athlete support.
8. Conclusion
When overtime is high, the visible problem looks like understaffing.
The deeper problem may be upstream:
not decided;
not communicated;
sent back;
done again;
worked late.
Break that loop first.
Instead of asking the downstream team to somehow squeeze out 2 more efficient hours, make upstream work arrive in a form that can actually be executed.
Then return part of the savings to athletes.
That produces a healthier cycle: athletes perform, support staff do necessary work, rework shrinks, and part of the economic benefit flows back into the sport itself.
Sources
- Garg S, Misra S. “Causal model for rework in building construction for developing countries.” Journal of Building Engineering. 2021;43:103180. DOI: 10.1016/j.jobe.2021.103180
- Hassan AM, Renuka SM, Monika T. “Analysis of factors causing rework and their mitigation strategies in construction projects.” Materials Today: Proceedings. 2023. DOI: 10.1016/j.matpr.2023.03.517
- Pencavel J. “The Productivity of Working Hours.” The Economic Journal. 2015;125(589):2052-2076. DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12166
- Rosen S, Sanderson A. “Labour Markets in Professional Sports.” The Economic Journal. 2001;111(469):F47-F68. DOI: 10.1111/1468-0297.00598
- Kahn LM. “The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. 2000;14(3):75-94. DOI: 10.1257/jep.14.3.75
