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In-person event

Making the games: A conversation with Jeremy Beeton and David Goldstone - Government Olympic Executive

The Institute for Government discussed the lessons for government from the Olympics with the Government Olympic Executive.

Speakers:

  • Jeremy Beeton, Director-General, Government Olympic Executive, formerly Principal Vice President of Bechtel Ltd
  • David Goldstone, Director of Finance & Build, Government Olympic Executive, formerly Finance Director of Partnerships UK

Chair: Jill Rutter

Opening up, Jill Rutter quoted Boris Johnson’s Conservative conference speech that morning, on how the nation was “gobsmacked” by the fact that the UK pulled off such a successful games. The Institute for Government were doing a lessons learned exercise on the games and tonight’s event was the first in our “Making the Games” series. Jeremy Beeton and David Goldstone had both been brought in in mid-2007- two years after the bid was won -  to make sure the games were delivered on time and on budget.

Jeremy Beeton noted that with £400 billion of government projects currently under management, government should be the most informed, intelligent client for major projects in the UK. From his background in construction project management, the Olympics were not large in terms of the size of the project; what made delivering them so uniquely challenging was the complexity of the Games, and the fact that no-one was ultimately in charge. The scale of the Games had rapidly evolved, with the project being the equivalent of setting up a FTSE-100 company to operate for six weeks and then collapse immediately afterwards.

Jeremy Beeton criticised the overlapping nature of government bodies which scrutinised the project from 2005 onwards. This meant that the teams had to give “endless explanations” of their actions. Likening delivery of the Olympics to a 4x100m relay, he said that it was now for government to deliver a legacy from the Games; the equivalent of running the final, critical leg of the Games project. This would require quick decision-making on both the physical and ‘soft’ legacy from the Games. Concluding, Beeton noted the safety record of the Olympics – no construction worker died in building the Park for the first time in Olympic history, whereas in Athens the death toll was at least fourteen. The standard reached at the London Olympics now needed to be embedded in the construction industry.

David Goldstone saw six key factors in the success of delivering the Games. The first was the willingness to spend significant sums of money to bring the best people into key roles at the GOE & Olympic Delivery Authority. The second was the comprehensive Games budget of £9.3 billion developed in March 2007; after the initial underestimate of the funding required for the Olympics this helped build confidence and reassure the Treasury. The third was the way risk & contingency were managed – contingency funding was aligned with where risk was best managed, leading to three levels of contingency controlled by the GOE, ODA and Ministers respectively.

The fourth factor listed by David Goldstone was the incentive structure of contracts within the project, which concentrated on rewards for success, not penalties for failure. CLM, the delivery partner for the Olympic Delivery Authority, had made significant profits – but this was a consequence of their success in delivering the construction programme for the Games. The fifth factor was focusing on making decisions on time; given the need for cross-departmental working, having one decision-making forum in which the relevant people could participate had proved crucial. The final factor was the transparency of the government budgeting process; regular public reports and briefings for opposition politicians saved time in the long run by limiting the number of Parliamentary Questions and FOI requests about the project.

Questions and Answers

The speakers emphasised the need for continuity on projects; briefing opposition politicians had limited the scope for changes on the project with a change of government. Jeremy Beeton indicated that changing the programme manager would have been disastrous, and that frequent turnover of Senior Responsible Owners contributed to failures of projects. Both speakers reiterated the need for collaborative working on the Games, with David Goldstone adding that the government had no control over LOCOG, meaning that you needed continuity in personnel and relationships to work together effectively.

Jonny Medland

Keywords
Health
Publisher
Institute for Government

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