"London 2012"

Event Report

On Tuesday, 6th December 2005, members of BCS PROMS-G and their guests, were treated to an insight to the management of projects to deliver the infrastructure for London 2012, our Olympic programme. The speakers, Chris Payne and Mark Scholey, were introduced by Dr Tidu Maini of the Tanaka Business School at Imperial College, London.

Chris Payne introduced and scoped the bid programme explaining the process by which London had won the bid, showing how the benefits would accrue. The stakeholder relationships were complex, as illustrated in the copies of slides. There were potential conflicts in the outcomes desired by the different stakeholders. The bid needed to be structured into a series of discrete projects with explicit outcomes and deliverables. Teams were formed to ensure success for each project. Each project was broken down into smaller elements with milestones and there was a need for every project to work across departments (comms, marketing, etc.). Many people were working in multiple areas with huge resource constraints – key requirement to “beg and borrow”. Status Tracker tools were used to monitor progress. Preparation for and execution of an Evaluation Commission visit was used as an illustration for testing using established methodologies using the V-model: Component testing confirmed the venue plans and theme presentations had the right content; assembly testing confirmed the venue plans and theme presentations worked to the right timeline; product testing confirmed the whole end-to-end plan was going to be a success; contingency plans were developed for different scenarios such as traffic problems, bad weather, illness. Everything was documented and held within a “control centre”.

The lessons learned included:

• Recognising the need for regular communications through different media; managing expectations and aligning objectives; allowing all stakeholders to contribute, and the need for people-focused relationships at leadership level; using a mentoring system; focusing on the key audience; recruiting specialist and independent knowledge to scrutinise all aspects of the bid and refine the plans accordingly.
• The importance of communication between a highly mobile fast moving and media intensive environment meant the need to make sure the chiefs had both the information they needed and the need to be flexible. The chiefs need to communicate regularly and consistently with the doers! It was particularly difficult to implement a formal change management procedure in such a fast paced environment with the decision makers constantly on the move where time needed to be used efficiently.
• On the experience of using project management methodologies:
  1. Need to build the styles to fit the personalities and the organisation
  2. Budget management was always a challenge
  3. Established methodologies (e.g. Prince) were often not flexible enough to meet our challenges (refer to previous meeting on PMBoK)
  4. Need to leave room for initiative from the project managers to notice and fill gaps.
  5. Teamwork crucial

Mark Scholey then described the projects which comprised the programme and brought it to life through a host of examples. There are three phases: build up, operation and legacy; every phase has both direct and indirect aspects. Mark illustrated his delivery with timetables, achievements, relationships, key milestones, impact on transport, communications, changes to employment and the reversing the polarity of London.

The talk was followed by probing questions, some of which were taken informally in the lecture theatre and, later, at the local.

The presentation is available for download (2714k).