The Olympic Games are always carrying sportive but also economical promises – for the 2024 Games in Paris, 150 000 jobs are expected to be created, and 30% of them in the realm of logistics (the rest in construction and tourism). Among those 45 000, one quarter will be dedicated to cleanliness, the half to raw materials and merchandises transport and the last quarter to passengers transport. It seems to be great news, but almost every time, the cost of this exceptional logistics operations are underestimated, and the financial balance of the event isn’t achieved.
The transportation system is key, not only in the capital but also between all of the co-host cities. It is a opportunity for some cities to develop new transportation networks, more ecological and efficient, like in Beijing in 2008 for example, when $20 billions were invested for urban transportation – the air pollution decreased for a while, but mostly due to important and temporary restrictions for personal cars, coal and chemical plants.
The management of accomodations, food and staff is also more than complicated. At the peak of Athen’s 2004 games, 60,000 meals where produced every day by the athlete village kitchen, with daily shipments of 210,000 kilograms of raw ingredients—all served up on four million biodegradable plates for 18,000 athletes, coaches, and staff. In London, 70 000 voluteers worked for the organization of the games (more than 240 000 applications were received), and the same amont is expected to be recruited for Paris in 2024.
Because of those challenges, transportation, construction or hotel companies are often partners of the Games, and push the cities applications through an dynamic lobbyism (Bouygues, AccorHotels, Suez for Paris 2024 for example). Being partner of the Olympics is a great marketing operation – you can see below how UPS used it as a “green washing campain” for London 2012.
The logistics planning for Paris 2024 is for the first time aligned with the Paris Agreement of 2015. The objective is to reduce the carbon footprint by -55% compared to the previous games in London and Rio. We can only hope that this prevision is not overestimated and that a global event like this one can be organized in a responsible way.
Employees in a “C Discount” warehouse in France, december 2012. JEAN-PIERRE MULLER / AFP
With the
decline of the manufacturing industrial sector in Western Europe, the working class shifted to activities which
aren’t classified as secondary sector, but whose tasks to perform are still
industrial. Those jobs are repetitive, painful and often cause occupational
diseases. Besides, the illusion of a vertical mobility which could allow the
motivated workers to climb the ladder and access to managing or technical
positions doesn’t remain for a long time – 80% of the jobs in logistics are
workers positions.
Inside the
warehouse, not every task has the same degree of arduousness. Preparation of
the purchase order, parcel and package sorting, packaging are the one fled by
employees. Better to be forklift operator, controller or data entry clerk, were
the working conditions are a bit easier. No one wants to stay a long time
working in a warehouse – the number of interim is particularly high, but
logistics offer long-term contracts and the working conditions for
non-qualified persons are sometimes worse outside.
Each company has also its own way to consider employees. Amazon was criticized several time for offering a very stressful and dehumanizing work environment. Recently, a pregnant woman sued the company, alleging she got fired because of her pregnancy – which isn’t the first case (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48185606).
Amazon Employees Speak Out About Workplace Conditions | NBC Nightly News
For a lot
of workers, logistics is « one of those realms where you go in without
much expectations and where you’d always like to go out, without perspectives»
(Carlotta Benvegnù & David Gaborieau, « Au hasard de la logistique.
Quand les mobilités ouvrières passent par l’entrepôt », La Vie des idées ,
30 octobre 2018. ISSN : 2105-3030). The issues faced by the large majority of employees should always be
kept in mind when looking at the operations in a warehouse « from the above »
like we always do in class.
One of the craziest logistic operation in the history took place in 1939 in France, short before the beginning of the second world war and the entry of the germans soldiers in Paris. The architect of this operation was Jacques Jaujard, the director of the biggest museum in the world, Le Louvre, and had one goal in mind : preserving the art collections from the dangers of the war, what he already had done with the Museum del Prado during the civil war in Spain.
An empty wing of the Louvre in 1939
The operation was well planned , and 4000 of the main
pieces were transfered to the Château de Chambord, at 160km from Paris. It was
a strategic choice for this main warehouse : the castle was easy to
defend, isolated from the bombing zones, and was located near to the others
castels of the Loire where the pieces could be redistributed. In three months,
37 convois of 5 to 8 trucks were used, escorted by tank truck in case of a
fire, and followed by hydrometric measuring device to ensure the good
conservation of the art pieces.
The sculptures and the paintings weren’t easy to transport : some were rolled, others were kept in their frame, putted into special boxes. In three days, 200 trained employees of the museum and volunteers packed 4000 artpieces in 1862 boxes, what would take one year to reinstall. The famous Winged Victory of Samothrace – 5m57 high, 30 tonnes of marble, was a logistic challenge in itself. The « Radeau de la méduse » – 4,91 m x 7,16 m couldn’t be rolled and was transported in a scenery truck from the Comédie-Française. In Versailles, the painting hook on the tramway’s catheter and provoked a big electricity breakdown.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo prepared to be transported in 1939
Of course, all of this operation was kept secret. The pieces were identified by code names and stickers : red for a masterwork, yellow for a major one, green for the others. The Joconde, hidden in its box, had three red ones.
During the war, the collections moved south and were always preserved, thanks to the collaboration of civils, museum employees but also german officiers like Wolff-Metternich who putted the safety of the world’s heritage above everything else.
If you are interested, the spanish version of a great french documentary about it is accessible on youtube :
Rail transportation produces 3,5 times less CO2 emissions than road, reduce our dependence to petrol and is a very safe way of travelling. Since 1992, the European Commission is trying to foster the transportation of goods by rail by liberalizing the sector or encouraging interoperability and security in the Union, without obtaining significant results. Here is a short summary of some problems freight has to face in Europe.
First issue : The technical differences from a country to another
Even if most European railway have a rail gauge of 1,435 mm, this isn’t the case of the Iberian peninsula, Russia or Ukraine for example. At a time were Europe wasn’t a peaceful continent, it had a goal: prevent your enemies to invade your country. The electrification systems are also very different, as well as the signalling systems (19 different ones in the EU), the loading gauge (the width of trains, essential data to pass through tunnels), or the platforms height.
Second issue : The cost
Besides important fixed cost due to high
loading and unloading costs, freight trains have to pay a certain amount of
money for each kilometre they make on the infrastructure, which isn’t always
the case on the road. It contribute to raise the cost of the rail, when at the
same time trucks aren’t paying for the « damage » they occur to a
public infrastructure.
Third issue : The time
Transporting goods by rail takes time. The
average speed of a freight train is 18km/h in Europe, due to several factors:
the bad cooperation between countries to organize the allocation of trains
paths, the interoperability issues, and the bad quality of the infrastructure, This
make rail an impossible option to choose for transporting perishable goods and
a bad one when you need a fast and punctual delivery.
To conlcude, railway freight could represent a great alternative to the transportation by road in the EU, but it has to face some important challenges which cannot be solved at a national scale. We can only hope that the rising environmental requirements will contribute to develop the quality of the service and initiate a significant modal transfer.
To go further: the intercontinental freight corridor from China to Germany
Chana Orloff (1888 -1968) is a well-known
artist, who lived her whole life between France and Israël. In the 2000’s, her
descendants decided to offer to the city hall of Paris a bronze print of one of
her art pieces : Mon fils marin (My son sailor), and in 2008, the local
administration of the 14th arrondissement of Paris agreed to install this
sculpture not far from the artist’s former studio. However, because of logistics
and administrative problems, it was only installed in November 2018, which
means 10 years after the original decision! But why is it so difficult to
transport and install a medium-size piece like this from its art-warehouse until
a street of Paris?
Mon fils marin, Chana Orloff
First step: finding a sculpture, finding a
place
You
may want to install a sculpture in your city for different reasons. Sometimes,
one art piece is located on the way of your future tramway, and you have to
reinstall it as soon as possible. Sometimes, an artist, or its descendants,
make you a gift, which can be poisoned if it is a big one (cf The Jeff Koons
issue, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/koons-tulips-sculpture-will-not-be-installed-in-front-of-palais-de-tokyo-in-paris).
Or, you may just want to introduce art in the everyday life of the city
inhabitants, and you choose one of the sculpture sleeping in the art storage
centres of the city, which are in fact located outside of the city.
Some
sculptures are tall, some of them are heavy: you will need to study the floor’s
structure to make sure that you can put something at this place. In cities like
Paris, whose ground was diggen by the metro, the catacombs, the old quarries,
it can be a real problem, and you always have surprises when you begin to dig.
The place you choose should be easily accessible by a van or by a truck,
depending on the size of your art piece, but also visible, to allow the
pedestrians to enjoy it (your “final consumer” in this case), and sometimes
symbolic, if you want to commemorate an historic episode or pay homage to a
local artist.
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (the architects of the Centre Pompidou in Paris), Xavier Veilhan
Second step: the administrative labyrinth
You want to install your sculpture
in this beautiful park near to the Seine, but are you sure that you are allowed
to? The information flow is crucial in this kind of project involving a lot of
different persons, and you have to ask for the authorizations in the proper
order: does the arrondissement’s mayor agree with you? The others political representatives? What is
the opinion of the artist? Are the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in favour
of the project?
The crucial part of all of this is
to obtain the building permit. It can take months, and be a failure for plenty
of reasons. If there is a protected monument near to the place, if the
simulation of the art piece in its future environment does not convince the
city’s architect, if you forgot to sign one of the 24 pages of the formula, you
can restart everything from the beginning.
During this time, you can start
preparing the operational part, and hiring the company which will install the
sculpture. The art transportation market is dominated by a few enterprises (cf https://logisticsmgepsupv.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/fine-art-logistics/),
and as it is a public contract, you have to organize a bid solicitation to
select the best offer – the price is usually the decisive factor.
Some parts of this process are
incompressible. The objective is to organize the information flow in order to
waste a minimum of resources if the project is stopped, but also to anticipate
the futures steps to be efficient.
Les Rochers dans le Ciel, Didier Marcel
Third step: the operational part
Once everything is settled, you will
have to manage different actors at the same time to assemble three pieces
together: the floor, the pedestal and the sculpture. The floor can be prepared
in advance, but you can’t let a hole in the sidewalk for a long time:
technicians of the green spaces department should be here in advance and stay
until the end. Besides, the climate factor can prevent you from digging and
building, in winter when the floor is frozen, or if it is raining continuously
during days or weeks. However, the time
limit of your construction authorization can’t be modified, which forces you to
select the safest time window at your disposal.
Once this issue fixed, the art
transportation company you hired must bring the statue at the right place at
the right time, and so must the pedestal maker (most of the time an independent
craftsman). The repartition of the tasks is crucial and must be defined before
the D-Day, to know who will be in charge of assembling the pedestal with the
ground, joining the sculpture and the pedestal, bringing the tools, etc.
Of course, all the signalization
panels have to be present on the site during the operation, as well as the
construction authorizations, especially if your project requires to stop or
deviate the circulation of cars and passers-by.
Les Poings d’eau, Pascale Marthine Tayou
Fourth step: the inauguration cocktail
This kind of project isn’t over
when the sculpture is standing on the right place, but only after some
mundanities and speeches gathering representatives, locals, artists and
administrative employees. Booking a place, sending invitations, providing some
petits fours, wine and champagne, those are the last tasks you will have to
perform is order to accomplish your mission until the end!
Installing a sculpture in a public area is always a tailored process, which relies on several factors: the size, shape and signification of your art piece, as well as the administrative, political and geographical environment in which you operate. Organizing the information flows and material can be optimized in a certain way but it’s a one-shot operation where any delay or mistake postpone the installation to the next year – a loss of time and money for the community. This explains why it took ten years to install Mon fils marin in the Place des Droits de l’Enfant in Paris – if you go there for tourism, go take a look at it!
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 