Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction
The Games of the 30th Olympiad, held in London during the summer
of 2012, gave the UK international exposure. The construction of the
Olympic Park in east London and all the other Olympic venues around
the country continues to receive critical acclaim. The construction of
the Olympic infrastructure just had to be delivered on time; no Games
had ever been delivered late and London was certainly not going to
be the fi rst. After six years of work the delivery of the 'greatest show
on earth' was heralded as a triumph. This topic describes how certain
elements of the construction programme required to stage the Games
contributed to that triumph.
In this opening chapter we therefore introduce the concept of Purchase
and Supplier Engineering (PSE) and highlight the key distinguishing
features of PSE from other, more standard approaches to programme
procurement and supply chain management.
The Olympic Games requires the host country to deliver a spectacular
stage on which the Games can be played. The scope and specifi cations
for the infrastructure requirements of the London 2012 Olympic and
Paralympic Games were no different from the 29 other Games that had
preceded them. They were both diverse in engineering terms and highly
complex and they were constrained by an immovable deadline for deliv-
ery - namely the opening ceremony. The project had to be completed
on time and to budget, while also delivering against the legacy and
environmental commitments described in London's bid proposal to host
the 2012 Games. What made this challenge especially diffi cult was not
only its scale, but that it involved almost all construction disciplines
and required them to respond and overcome numerous design, engineer-
ing and construction problems. Moreover, a large and visible part of the
delivery concerned the construction of sporting stadia at a time when
the construction of Wembley Stadium had encountered major time and
cost overruns, to the detriment of all concerned, which perhaps added
to the initial reluctance of some fi rms to engage on the Olympics
programme.
The scale of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) work to deliver
the stage for the London 2012 Games was valued at around £9.2 billion.
Delivery of this massive investment required the procurement of approx-
imately 2000 separate contracts in a period of less than fi ve years. The
number of contracts was comprised of approximately 250 major,
