What went wrong with the Co-op Live project?

On 23 April 2024, comedian Peter Kay was due to be the launch act for the 23,500-seater Co-op Live arena in Manchester, the UK’s largest indoor entertainment venue. But the safety inspectors weren’t in a laughing mood. There had been huge delays in fitting and testing the arena’s electrics; and there were broader safety concerns when a nozzle from the ventilation and air conditioning system fell to the ground in the run-up to opening night.

Co-op Live’s official statement explained: “The ambition and scale of this venue is enormous, including across our innovative technical infrastructure… We are continuing to work very closely with multiple stakeholders and responsible authorities to deliver against the rigorous set of guidelines and protocols.”

“Safety is paramount in the industry,” one project leader with experience of large venue openings told Project. (With little specific knowledge of Co-op Live, they preferred to remain anonymous and talk in general terms.)

“We should be understanding – and the project team working on it will be analytical in learning lessons. But the bottom line is that deadlines do create pressure in a venue project like this. Ticket sales are key to financial viability.”

According to one source within the fire services, talking to Manchester Evening News (MEN) on 21 April, “We viewed it a week ago and it looked like there was six months’ work to do.” Stories of unfinished toilet facilities and lack of safety testing also explain the refusal of the council to issue a completion certificate.

The result was the downscaling of a test event featuring Rick Astley (to 4,000 people) and the cancellation of a series of headline acts in the days afterwards, including Kay.

Get your bad news out – fast

The project had been in trouble for some weeks. Worker morale had reportedly plunged as the deadline drew close, and “on-the-ground warnings had been made for weeks, if not months, that the venue would not be ready” for the grand opening, added the MEN. Staff told the BBC: “The root cause of all the problems is coming from the building, not the operations. From an outside perspective, people presume it’s being run badly.”

“Pressures are very heavy on individuals – the site management team for instance,” said our source. “They’re often dealing with decisions out of their control and doing their best. But the pressure is huge.”

But, they added, problems often arise when poor communication – especially around bad news – becomes a cultural norm on a project.

“We don’t know how the comms were between subbies, contractors and project managers – and up to the owners,” they went on. “Contractors can be optimistic… Until the last minute! They might be avoiding conflict or perhaps extra work – who knows what the psychology is. As a project manager, you have to be able to call out over-optimism from contractors – and when things look wrong, they need to face up to it. I always say, try to look two months out and get messages communicated then.”

“Pick two”

Initially announced in September 2020, the original launch date of December 2023 may have added pressure to complete the project from a consortium of private investors, including singer Harry Styles.

Tim Leiweke, CEO of Co-op Live’s majority owner Oak View Group, spoke out at the postponed launch to reassure concert-goers on safety. He blamed the delays on snagging issues – as well as external tweaks to the project spec, such as extra redundancies for a police communication system.

“Anyone in development and in construction will tell you: it is harder today to build things in the UK,” he told the BBC (see Project’s summer 2024 issue on why it’s hard to build infrastructure projects here).

“We got through COVID-19. We got through the rainiest season in the last 20 years. All of those things ultimately had an impact. To the credit of the 10,000 people that built this arena, they stuck with it.”

For project managers, the iron triangle of cost, time and quality – with the famous requirement to “pick two” – will be an obvious factor here.

“You can set the budget and deadline – but you need to have a discussion with the client about what kinds of contingency you build in,” our source said. “That has to happen at the start. If that float is being eroded, you need to have the conversation. If the date is sacrosanct, you need more float in there – the Olympics would be a good example; maybe you need to be ready for budget overruns; quality, obviously in a public building, has a floor. Safety is absolute.”

Public relations

Co-op Live finally hit its stride on 14 May with a gig from indie veterans Elbow – whose frontman Guy Garvey praised the venue and its facilities. Based on reported figures, the project was a mere £15m over budget and only five months late on the original project plan; against the rescheduled opening of 23 April, it was only just over three weeks late.

True, elements of the final design – such as office spaces and VIP areas – had reportedly been de-prioritised to get the main venue finished. But this suggests dynamic project management against exacting sponsor demands, rather than fundamental failure.

“If you get hit with unforeseen events, you have to secure a priority completion,” said our source. “A minimum viable product is a perfectly rational response.”

And while it’s not strictly the responsibility of the project manager, our source added, “the press could have been handled differently. They could have been a bit more frank and focused on the value to the public of a postponement – selling the importance the venue places on safety, for example.”

The actual PR? Gary Roden, the general manager, resigned on 25 April after significant backlash to his comments about “poorly run” smaller venues.

MEN sources in the council claimed the US owners had “misunderstood how we have to approach things in Britain, how stuff gets done”. Ambitious project deadlines may have run afoul of local accreditation processes, for example, or the availability of skilled labour.

“But even when a project manager is confident enough to pass on news that might not be welcome, there are all sorts of financial pressures on owners beyond those advisories,” our source added. With a venue the size of Co-op Live, soft launch events with smaller acts just aren’t feasible – and big acts are booked so far in advance, and have such complex staging requirements, that the deadline becomes all-important.

It’s the most obvious point of the iron triangle at play – but it clearly wasn’t the only one.