Microsoft Word: Documents That Get Read

// orientation

Welcome aboard

You've just walked into the Department of the Chief Minister's Olympic Bid Document Working Group. Congratulations.

For the next four hours you're part of a team helping Janelle Pemberton, Senior Procurement Officer (acting), turn a chaotic Word draft into Australia's formal bid to host the XXVII Olympiad in Darwin in 2034. The IOC has prescriptive formatting standards. The Commonwealth is enthusiastic. The Prime Minister has indicated in-principle support for $4 billion in Federal infrastructure underwriting. The bid is due COB.

Janelle's draft is downloadable here.

Damo is on annual leave. You will be using Microsoft Word, the styles pane, the Navigation pane, multilevel numbered lists, the Table of Contents tool, captions, tracked changes, Compare Documents, and a fair amount of Copilot Chat. By the end of the afternoon you will have a polished, professional Olympic bid document, lodged via the IOC City Bid Portal.

Your context documents include:

Damo's original email to Janelle, eight weeks ago, instructing the bid be drafted
Janelle's reply, sent at 3:47am the following morning
Janelle's attempt at a draft
Janelle's Copilot Designer attempt to create the Mascot (supplementary fun only)
Perth's perfect bid document

It is, to be very clear, a fictional scenario. The bureaucratic setting is the carrier for the actual training: getting genuinely fluent with Microsoft Word's long-document tooling and Copilot Chat, the two skills that turn a 10-page mess into a decent deliverable in an afternoon.

// activity resources

Working files

Download these into a single working folder before you start. The bid draft, the formatting guidelines, the prompt pack, the reference exemplar, and Janelle's mascot pitch deck.

DOCX Janelle's bid draft (v0.7 FINAL FINAL) 16 KB · the working draft you'll fix DOCX Copilot Chat Prompt Pack 32 KB · starter prompts for drafting and fact-checking PDF IOC Bid Document Formatting Guidelines 190 KB · the IOC house style DOCX Perth 2032 Bid Document, reference example 458 KB · what good looks like PDF Copilot Designer, Janelle Pemberton, 14 October 2025 3.4 MB · the Plover Pete mascot pitch

FROM: Damien Routledge <damien.routledge@nt.gov.au>
TO: Janelle Pemberton <janelle.pemberton@nt.gov.au>
SENT: Wednesday, 1 October 2025 4:47 PM ACST
SUBJECT: Olympics bid, you're on this, need by Friday three weeks

Janelle,

Just out of a meeting with the CM. The Department is going to lodge an Australian bid for a future Olympic Games. Darwin as host. CM is enthusiastic, PM has indicated in-principle support for Commonwealth co-funding of infrastructure (north of $4b, but don't put a figure in the doc until I confirm). Treasury is on board. Tourism NT is going to lose its mind.

I need a draft bid document on my desk by Friday three weeks from now. Aim for the Summer Games, a future cycle, dates to be negotiated. The IOC City Bid Portal opens later this month for bids against the 2034 cycle. We will lodge formally before the end of October.

Use the IOC formatting guidelines (find them on the bid portal, they're very prescriptive). 30 to 40 pages, formal tone, all the trimmings, Executive Summary, Vision, venues, athletes, transport, financials, risk, the lot. The IOC house style is Calibri 11pt with navy headings. They will reject anything that doesn't comply on first-page review.

The angle: lean hard into NT aircon knowhow. Athlete welfare in tropical conditions is the unique selling point, refrigerated villages, climate-controlled venues, cooled medal podiums. We have the engineering capability, we have the Federal backing, we have the cultural offer. Make all of that land hard.

I'm on annual leave from the 7th. Hannah will be your point of contact for anything internal. CM expects to read the final draft over the long weekend.

Don't overthink it. How hard can it be?

Damo

Damien Routledge Deputy Chief Executive
Department of the Chief Minister

FROM: Janelle Pemberton <janelle.pemberton@nt.gov.au>
TO: Damien Routledge <damien.routledge@nt.gov.au>
SENT: Thursday, 2 October 2025 3:47 AM ACST
SUBJECT: RE: Olympics bid, you're on this, need by Friday three weeks

Damo,

Thanks for the heads up. Quick questions before I start:

Have we got a budget allocated for venue refrigeration costings? I can ballpark but I don't want the financial table to be wishful.
Are we naming the Prime Minister in the document or just "the Commonwealth"? PMC said the PM's comments at the press conference were "in-principle" which I read as not yet a public number.
The IOC formatting guidelines, am I OK to download them from the City Bid Portal directly, or do you need me to coordinate with the Department of Foreign Affairs first?
Capacity figures for TIO Stadium, the website says 14,500 across configurations but you mentioned a much higher number at the meeting. Is the higher number a planned expansion, or a different stadium?
Population data for Darwin, I've seen 150,000 most places but you were quoting 1.2 million metropolitan. Is that including the wider Top End or projected growth or a different definition?
Litchfield National Park elevation, you mentioned 2,400m for endurance events. Is that a different Litchfield? Our one is mostly low-lying tropical and I don't want to put numbers in that the IOC will fact-check. Plus where's the consultation with owners at?
Can you forward me the in-principle Federal funding commitment letter? I want to quote from it accurately.

I know you're heading off Tuesday, happy to grab 15 minutes Monday if that helps clarify any of the above. Otherwise I'll go on what we discussed and Hannah can flag anything that needs your sign-off when you're back.

Three weeks is doable. I've already started a working draft on the shared drive (Janelle_BID_DRAFT_v0.7_FINAL_FINAL.docx, version naming TBD).

Janelle

Janelle Pemberton Senior Procurement Officer (acting)
Department of the Chief Minister

Damo, hear me out, I know we said no mascot until the IOC approves the cultural programme, but I had Copilot Designer running last night and I think we've got something. The Plover (technically the Masked Lapwing, Vanellus miles) is unmistakably Australian, native to the Top End, and projects exactly the right amount of Territory energy. Voted Australia's favourite native bird in three consecutive National Geographic Australian Wildlife Polls (2019, 2021, 2023). Working name: "Plover Pete".

I'm proposing 200 volunteers in custom plover suits for the Opening Ceremony, they enter from the four corners of TIO Stadium during "The Sky" segment, perform a synchronised territorial display, and converge centre-pitch for an aerial stooping formation finale. It's bold, distinctive, and nothing any other host city would do. NT-developed micro-refrigeration units worn under the costume keep performers below 22°C even during peak February humidity (Territory aircon knowhow at scale).

Damo did not reply. He was on annual leave from 7 October. Hannah took five weeks of personal leave starting 14 October. The Federal funding letter never arrived. Janelle wrote the document she could write with the information she had. Three weeks later, you arrived. This is where you come in.

You'll work as part of one of five teams. Janelle has been told to deliver this bid by COB. That deadline is today. Your team has a chapter of the bid document to draft, polish, and contribute to the merged final version.

The work, in three phases

Phase 1

Fix Janelle's mess

Open Janelle's draft from the SharePoint site.

Apply Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 styles consistently across the document. Modify the heading styles to match the IOC house style (navy, Calibri, the right sizes). Add multilevel numbered list formatting. Insert an auto-generated Table of Contents. Add a section break before the body so page numbering starts at 1 in the right place. Run the Accessibility Checker.

Phase 2

Draft your team's chapter using Copilot Chat

Each team takes its assigned chapter (see below). You will use Copilot Chat as your drafting partner. Word limits are tight; the IOC enforces them on first-page review. Copilot will help you trim, expand, rewrite for tone, generate tables, and, critically, fact-check Janelle's claims.

Janelle has populated the draft with claims she didn't verify. Some of them are suspect. Use Copilot Chat to fact-check anything that looks shaky. Replace the claims you can't support.

The activity can be completed in TEAMS working on one section each for large groups.

Each team owns one chapter of the bid

Team	Chapter
01	Vision + Federal Government Support (sections 2 to 3)
02	Venues (section 4, six venue precincts)
03	Athletes' Village + Transport (sections 5 to 6)
04	Cultural Programme + Opening Ceremony (section 8)
05	Financial Plan + Risk Register (sections 9 to 10)

// ground rules

A few ground rules

Use Heading 1, 2, and 3 styles. Never manually bold a paragraph and call it a heading. The IOC will return non-compliant documents on first-page review.
Word limits are real. Use Word's word count and Copilot's trim feature.
Fact-check Janelle's claims. She wrote the draft at 3:47am with no source material. Some of her numbers are suspect. Verify before you build on them.
Have a go. If you don't know what a button does, click it. You can't break Word from inside this activity.
Don't trust Copilot's output uncritically. Oh, and don't trust Janelle's either. When you ask Copilot to fact-check a claim, read its answer carefully and verify against an authoritative source if it matters.
It's allowed to be funny. Lean into stupidity of being asked to write a 30-page Olympic bid in two hours. That's the point.

// at the end

The debrief

We'll debrief for 30 minutes. We'll talk about:

What worked in your team's collaboration
What didn't

Darwin 2034 Olympic Bid: Document Working Group

Welcome aboard

Working files

Damo's email to Janelle

Janelle's reply

Janelle's Teams message to Damo

Your mission