Roads to Resilience

Learning One factor that helped the overall programme was a keen focus on promoting learning across projects. For example, “ the Stadium project began say on ‘Day one’ and the Aquatics Centre project kicked in at ‘Day one hundred and one’, so we were learning how to do things in the Stadium, which we would then reproduce within the other projects ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). This approach to learning also meant that “ we recorded opportunities alongside risks, certainly at a project level and a programme level … mainly opportunities to save money or to save time ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). Although it had a total of around 1,800 contactors to manage (and a total workforce peaking at circa 12,500), the ODA itself was a lean organisation, with peak staffing levels of around 280 during the period 2007 to 2012. Their role as project sponsor was a strategic one, including developing and implementing governance strategies, project and programme monitoring, and progress reporting. The consortium CLM (CH2M Hill, Laing O’Rourke & Mace) was contracted by the ODA to act as programme managers, taking responsibility for all of the project operations. CLM brought in around 600 people to manage the projects and the contractor relationships. CLM also had its own risk team, which maintained very close links to the ODA risk team. Each of the 40 major projects had its own control board, which produced a risk report. Working closely with the CLM risk team, the ODA risk team would produce a programme-level risk review. This was reported into the ODA programme board, which then reported directly to government. Through engaging with the delivery partner, CLM, responsible for programme management, a uniform approach to risk management was developed. Project status reports were produced in a common format, and presented on a single sheet of A3. These project reports showed the status of each project, the current level of risk, and the financial impact of those risks. ODA applied a scoring mechanism that considered impact on cost, time, reputation and some secondary objectives that allowed them to prioritise their efforts. The risk management method was designed to be proactive and forward looking: “ We encouraged the project managers to keep an active log of what we called ‘Trends and Issues’, so we could see trends emerging and issues arising ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). With around 1,800 small contractors, there was a significant risk of supplier failure. As part of their active risk management process, ODA “ monitored the health of the smaller contractors, particularly the ones who were crucial to the individual projects … if they had cash flow difficulties we encouraged them to tell us and we try and accelerate payments to them ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA). This approach to managing the risk of contractor failure was seen as an essential precautionary step during the period of recession preceding the London Olympics. Business structure Strategy, tactics and operations

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