mayfly.net

Just had responses back to an ITT we issued for telecoms consultancy. The quality of the responses is generally high which is great. Now the difficult process of deciding who we get for this. Need to be rigorous and as objective as possible. Hope it all works out. I wonder if any of the respondents will find this blog? Highly unlikely! It lurks in an obscure backwater of the web.

Speaking of backwaters, the documentary about the Mississippi backwaters and a man called Kenny Salwey, who lives in them, was excellent. I found a radio show about the programme. I thought the cinematography was outstanding. Kenny’s is a life that holds much appeal but it must be incredibly hard.

We completed the first Co-ordination Commission visit last Friday. We called it CoCom 1 which sounds like a movie title or our “current defense (sic) condition” – “we’re at CoCom 1”, which means “World War Three” is imminent. Anyway, I’ve now caught up on sleep! It was a manic few days, but we seem to have done well judging by the press comments. I was involved in the planning and execution of the site visit. Great co-operation from people at AEG for The O2 visit, Murphys and LDA people at the Power Tunnels site, Newham people at Holden Point and LCR people at the Stratford CTRL site. So thanks to all of them! The great thing about the London 2012 project is the team spirit it engenders. This sounds a bit too good to be true, but in my experience it is very real, and it’s one of the best reasons to be working on the project. And thanks to the LOCOG team I worked with as well!

I will be giving a lecture to the BCS Project Management Specialist Group on December 6th 2005. This will take place at the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, with the kind assistance of Tidu Maini. A very brief synopsis of the lecture is as follows:

“The bid was truly a once in a lifetime experience and the outcome was sensational. But behind the scenes, the work of the bid needed to be structured into a series of discrete projects with explicit outcomes and deliverables. Numerous teams were formed to ensure success for each project. Each project was broken down into smaller elements with clear milestones. Progress had to be monitored continuously. Many people were working in multiple areas with huge resource constraints. This presentation outlines the approach taken and identifies, from a project management perspective, the numerous lessons – both good and bad – from an unbelievably charged two years.”

I’m really looking forward to this event. There are some details here.

Back in June Rachel Church interviewed me for a case study about London 2012 technology for Ark Sports’ e-newsletter on Sport and Technology. I am now suddenly incredibly busy planning the very diverse technology responsibilities of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (which abbreviates to the horrible acronym LOCOG).

I was quoted in an article in The Times last week, commenting on the Cycling Road Race and Time Trial courses for 2012. Most of the work on these courses was actually done by Ken Farnes working for us as a consultant. Shame that wasn’t mentioned.

View from my office

This is the view from the office I occupied for most of the bid. You can see the Dome and the new Barclays Bank building on the left.

Dockalnds from ExCel centre

Taken on an XDA 2 from the South West corner of ExCel with the Dome in the distance in December 2004 during a site visit to rehearse the Evaluation Commission visit to London in February 2005.

I worked for London 2012, the London Olympic Bid, from October 2003 to 1st August 2005. I’m now part of the post-win transition team. I re-discovered this quote today, ironically enough from one of the Paris team, and thought it summed it up pretty well!

“Une candidature aux Jeux, c’est deux ans pour construire, un an pour convaincre, six mois pour consolider, deux mois pour gagner. Et une seconde pour tout perdre, ou tout confirmer.”