Roads to Resilience

Case study: The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA)

Introduction

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) 1 was established in March 2006 as a public body responsible for the construction of venues and infrastructure for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. The Authority worked closely with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) 2 , with their respective roles having been summarised as, ‘the ODA builds the theatre, and LOCOG puts on the show’. In fact the key responsibilities of the ODA included the construction of the Olympic Park, the planning and funding of transport for the Games, and the regulation of advertising and trading. The £7.2 billion programme included around 40 major projects, which the ODA had the overall responsibility for delivering. Now in the post-Olympics phase, the ODA is working to close out these contracts and to transform the Olympic Village into more than 2,800 new homes. The Olympics Games is a major global event, with most nations participating and a global television audience of around 4.5 billion. With such intense public attention worldwide, the reputation of the UK was at stake. The UK Government was well aware of the issues encountered by other major UK construction projects, notably Wembley Stadium, and the Scottish Houses of Parliament. Intense scrutiny by the national media was expected on such a high profile project. This is not a new issue as, for example, there had been criticism when construction was still taking place very close to the start of both the Athens and Beijing Olympics. In addition, “ in six of the previous summer Olympics, several of the ODA equivalents have been disbanded by government within two years of being formed because the governments have become edgy about the apparent lack of progress ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). The ODA “ from the outset set out to demonstrate that we were professional and transparent in our business relationships ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). To compound the issues facing the ODA, the global financial crisis meant that availability of private funding for major construction projects completely dried up at a critical time. This was of significant importance for the construction of the Olympic Village, which had initially been intended to be funded by private construction. The absence of private sector funding meant that the ODA had to approach government for what was tantamount to an open-ended bridging loan. This would have been difficult to pull off had not the ODA previously established an open and transparent working relationship with government. Given such high stakes, the risk management framework used was a critical element behind the success of the ODA. Key risks which were identified and planned for included: failure to deliver key projects on time, failure to retain key personnel, transport system failures, and significant damage to major assets.

People and culture

Commitment and shared purpose When the ODA was established in 2006 it was a totally new organisation and it benefited from having a ‘start-up’ culture. The commitment shown by the whole team was critical to its success. Within the ODA there was a real shared purpose: “ We had this one team ethos, we were all in this

1 See: http://www.london2012.com/about-us/the-people-delivering-the-games/oda 2 See: http://www.london2012.com/about-us/the-people-delivering-the-games/locog/

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success