In this article, the problems of operation and management of large-scale public projects are examined through sports and exposition facilities that had been executed at the national level. While most private projects are controlled on the basis of specific responsibility, public projects which usually executed for designated purpose and with limited time inevitably meet the problems of long-term operation and management. Although publicity is indispensible for these projects, the lack of consideration for long-term operation and management results in serious difficulties both in effective maintenance and usage. Facility Management is proposed as an alternative that can reasonably consider operation and management plan from the programming stage.
The representative instances are as follows. Despite the historical symbolism for Korean sports history, the sports facilities in Jamsil Stadium met a limited use due to the changes in the surroundings. Compared with that of Tokyo, the value of current Jamsil Stadium is rapidly decreasing. Among the 10 Worldcup Stadiums built for 2002 Seoul Worldcup, 6 stadiums continue to give financial burdens to local governments. Only Seoul Worldcup Stadium is operated in sound condition due to the desirable location and various related commercial facilities. Others stadiums in Suwon, Gwangju, and Jeonju are managed to be in budget. Repeated replacements of management entities for 1993 Daejeon Exposition Science Park facility degraded the utilization of existing facilities for 20 years. Differently from original plan, most parts of the 2012 Yeosu Exposition were decided to be sell to private corporations to pay off the national debt. Many national sports events like 2014 Incheon Asian Games, 2015 Gwangju Summer Universiade, and 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic are scheduled to be held and a lot of sports facilities are under construction for preparation. Despite these lessons from the precedents, 2014 Incheon Asian Games is currently being prepared with many new facilities and significant financial burden is expected from the excessive leverage.
The problems happened from the project planning stage with excessive investment and limited condition of project location to the operation and management stage with unclear role allocation between central and local government, unprofessional management organization, and unbalance of publicity and profitability. Facility management is defined as business activities pursuing the efficiency from the programming stage of the facility environment design, implementation, and operation and management. It is not just a practice of conventional maintenance and usual operation. Facility Management has been usually introduced into the private and commercial buildings. However, it can be a method for the large-scale public projects that would secure the efficient operation and management. It is also necessary to educate the professionals in Facility Management.