Building the Olympic Park: a PM success story

Matthew Kabik | July 30, 2012

Getting ready for the Olympics takes an enormous amount of practice: years of hard work, expertise, and dedication is the only way to find yourself surrounded by the best in the world.

And then there’s the people actually participating as athletes.

This post by Elizabeth Harrin features the trials, lessons learned, and successes of Louise Hardy, infrastructure manager for the construction work of the London Olympics. Hardy gave a presentation discussing her preparation for the games, and some of the challenges her team faced (such as lack of public trust and overall access):

One of the challenges faced by the infrastructure team was the lack of public expectation that they could pull it off. “We did exist in an environment which was very low confidence,” Hardy said. There was a drive in the team to build confidence, knowing that the programme dates were fixed and that they had the eyes of the country (and eventually the world) upon them.

The progamme was not without challenges. Access was a problem. There were 500 vehicle movements, 4 trains and 6 barge movements per day. There were only 2 vehicle access points and 5 personnel access points so managing the logistics of freight and people in and out what difficult.

Despite the challenges, the construction team was able to complete the projects on time and with flying colors. Her efforts, as Harrin points out, should be remarkable not only in that Hardy managed an enormous workforce and razor thin public trust, but that she also managed to pay attention to details that are forgotten on small projects.