Matteo Fardin Portfolio

FIPL

FIPL (Federazione Italiana di Powerlifting) is a sports association based in San Zenone al Lambro (Milan, Italy), which currently boasts thousands of athlete memberships.

This project was born with Luciano, the general secretary of FIPL and in collaboration of my associate and friend Andrea, who was an athlete of the same association. They felt the need to digitalize and automate as much as possible to follow the explosive growth of this evergrowing sport fenomenon.

In 2019, the initial blueprint for an ecosystem of three separate management programs was created, and it continues to be improved to this day.

Register

Screenshoot of a PL competition in 2023 from FIPL YouTube channel

For more information on FIPL

https://www.powerliftingitalia-fipl.it/

https://www.youtube.com/@PLitalia

The first program we identified as necessary was a database interface to manage the rapidly growing number of athletes in the association.

Previously handled on paper or through overly long Microsoft Excel sheets, the athlete list has now been migrated to a SQLite database fully accessible through the software. With a simple click or search, they can quickly see which athletes need to renew their subscriptions or if they have reached the age to move into a different competition category.

We also streamlined the nomination process, ensuring that every athlete knows their weigh-in time and competition schedule. Once a competition is set up, everything from the line-up to team receipts can be automatically generated and printed as PDFs.

Weigher

In 2020, after Register was released and integrated into the managing team's workflow, we proceeded with the development of the next two software programs: Weigher and Competition Manager.

Weigher is likely the most compact of the three. Its main function is to update athletes' weights, their opening attempt lifts, and other relevant information required for the competition. Once this data is entered, the software prints the necessary sheets for the competition judges and sends the updated information to the Competition Manager, where the live competition is managed.

Competition Manager

The final and most complex program is Competition Manager, which oversees the entire competition from start to finish.

It displays the athlete's information on a large screen during their performance, records the result of the lift based on the judges' decision, and shows the current rankings and the order of entry for the athletes waiting to compete.

Once the competition is over, it can print the final rankings, upload them to the website, and manage the athletes' awards ceremony.

Over the years, this has become the most refined and feature-rich software. Some of its key additions include: managing athletes' records, providing a streaming window that sends data to the computer managing the live stream (via YouTube using third-party software), and real-time communication with the FIPL main site, where it updates results live throughout the event.

Software Overview

The resulting work is a suite of three software applications written in C++, powered by the highly versatile Qt libraries. These applications utilize a series of SQLite databases that interact seamlessly throughout every step of the competition process.

From the moment athletes subscribe to the competition, through to the day of the event, and the subsequent publishing of the rankings, everything is entirely managed by these software systems.

The suite is divided in three different programs:

• Register: manages athletes database, subscription and the creation of sportif events;

• Weigher: manages they weight-in of competing athletes before the competition.

• Competition Manager: manages the whole competition, premiations and the creations of ranking PDF.