A challenge of olympic proportions

This year's Cardiff Business School lecture series welcomed two alumni as guest speakers: Spencer Dale as the Chief Economist for the Bank of England in September 2010 and this March Morag Stuart discussed the challenges she faced as the Head of Procurement for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Stuart began the lecture by recalling her student days "giggling at the back of the lecture theatre" with fellow alumnus Mike Shirley, who is now Director of OSTC, one of the principal sponsors of the Trading Room. It was quite an honour, she said, to be back and "right at the front, presenting".
The focus on the lecture lay in the lessons learned when procuring for such a large scale project, dually building the theatre for the games and regenerating a disadvantaged area of London.

Stuart was faced with an immovable deadline and a high-profile project that equated to delivering a construction programme twice the size of Terminal 5 in half the time in an area that had suffered from generational neglect.

In addition to the scale of the project, the mission for delivery included a requirement that the Games left a sustainable legacy, with the balanced scorecard identifying priority themes such as environmental responsibility and ethical sourcing as well as design impact, the need to promote innovation and excellence and the importance of community utilisation.

To further complicate matters, the changing economic climate radically impacted on the market engagement – as the procurement for construction began the economy was still in boom and there was low competitive tension for such a demanding project. As the country went into recession there was increasing appetite but the risk of supplier failure increased dramatically and had to be carefully managed.

Stuart identifies the clear policy objectives and senior management buy in from the outset as key to the overall success of the project, and the use of evaluation criteria applied throughout the process to ensure consistency. Construction is now 60% complete and the Olympic Park is beginning to transform the East London skyline.