Citius, Altius, Fortius
Posted by
Tim Taylor on Thu, Aug 02, 2012 @ 12:54 PM
With the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games well under way the legacy the games will leave behind starts to come into view.
Preparation for the London games has involved considerable re-development of the area where the Olympic Park now stands. Of the £9.4 billion ($14.46 billion) budget £7 billion was allocated to the building of the new Olympic venues and re-generation of parts of East London.
As the Beijing Olympics closed and the Olympic flag was handed over to Boris Johnson (the Major of London) not only did that start the rather odd spectacle of Jimmy Page (ex Led Zepplin) and Leona Lewis (ex X-Factor contestant) playing together on the top of a London Bus but so did the planning objections to the project. Unlike David Beckham (ex England Football / Soccer Captain) missing the goal (from the bus) the London Olympics and Paralympic developments have come in on time, to a revised budget having overcome any protestations.
The Olympic Park will be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Park after the Olympics have finished and the buildings sold, leased or managed by ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority) to a variety of organizations to provide affordable housing, schools, health centers, a power station, business centers, tourist attractions and, of course, state of the art sporting facilities.
Like any capital project the London Olympics has been through a planning, design, construction, handover & commissioning phases. Unlike many other projects however the “greatest show on earth” just happens to be taking pride of place between construction and eventual operation and maintenance phases.
McLaren places equal emphasis on the role of document control after a projects construction phase by providing application that cover the entire life cycle. Capital projects, as crucial as they are, are after all a means to an end. It is the result of the project that counts in the longer term.
If you are involved in the operation and maintenance of an asset you might like to take a look at our McLaren Enterprise – Assets which supports concurrent engineering to reduce the amount of shutdown time by coordinating documentation between teams enabling one or more projects to be run simultaneously.
For those of you waiting to see what the Olympics organizing committee have in store for the closing ceremony did any of you notice the continuity error in the “Happy and Glorious” film of James Bond escorting the Queen to the opening ceremony? If you missed it you can catch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW5abat5NEU and is well worth watching. If you notice it please post your observations below.