Roads to Resilience

Summary

The London Olympics generated exceptional levels of public interest and expectation, with 300,000 foreign tourists and 5.5 million day-trippers. It was also the biggest media event in history, attracting the largest ever global TV audience of 4.7 billion viewers. Employees at the ODA were successful in making this happen by delivering the construction and infrastructure projects on time. Their work has resulted in a number of industry awards. A key aspect of their success has been their approach to managing risk. By implementing a common approach to risk management that was embedded into the daily operations, project and programme level risks were identified and dealt with before they could disrupt the programme. By adopting a proactive approach, key issues such as supplier failure were prevented. Time, a major risk in the construction programme, was also successfully mitigated against. Two issues that contributed to the success of the programme were effective communication and a strong sense of commitment and shared purpose. Effective communication helped make risk management relevant to the daily operation of the programme. Alongside this the approach to managing risk was driven by a cohesive top management team that was united in a common goal. Resilience relates to the strength of the organisation; the ability to withstand an impact and bounce back. The ODA were successful in “ building a park which also had to have long term resilience in the sense of its future legacy ” (Chief Risk Officer, ODA).

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