{"id":15,"date":"2008-08-11T07:24:36","date_gmt":"2008-08-11T07:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/blog\/?p=15"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:53:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:53:47","slug":"delivering-the-olympic-%e2%80%9cproject%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-london-watches-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/delivering-the-olympic-%e2%80%9cproject%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-london-watches-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivering the Olympic \u201cProject\u201d \u2013 London watches Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stopping for a quick bite to eat at the Indigo offices on Friday, I caught a glimpse of the lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing\u2019s Olympic Games, confidently playing out its carefully choreographed scenes on the TV in our office reception.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever your political persuasion, it was hard not to be awestruck by the size, precision and sheer \u201cpeople power\u201d of the project taking place before my very eyes. A mammoth project in fact, delivered on time, with enormous funding, on an incredible scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

My thoughts though while watching the ceremony, fast-forwarded a lot closer to home. I couldn\u2019t help but think \u2013 <\/span><\/p>\n

How are the London 2012 Olympics going to compare, <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And what can and will the London 2012 organisers learn from the Beijing experience?<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

As a member of Indigo\u2019s project team, and albeit working on slightly smaller scale projects than the Olympics (!) \u2013 assessing and analysing the cost, risk and benefits of our clients projects is a daily challenge of ours. So I will be fascinated to see how London 2012 manage over the coming years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Failure to prepare? Prepare to fail<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

At Indigo, we specialise in helping our clients, who include no less than a number of high-profile worldwide Olympic partners, to become better project and programme managers. <\/span><\/p>\n

When \u201cdelivering\u201d a project, three key questions any good project manager will continually ask themselves are \u2013 <\/span><\/p>\n

Will the project be delivered on time?<\/span><\/p>\n

Is the project on budget? <\/span><\/p>\n

And is the project on target?<\/span><\/p>\n

Projects on time\u2026<\/span><\/strong> With Beijing, and a \u201cdrop-dead-date\u201d such as the Olympic Games, their project had to be, and therefore was, delivered \u201con time\u201d. The same of course will have to be for London 2012, no question! Missing the deadline would be like celebrating Christmas in June!<\/span><\/p>\n

Projects on budget\u2026<\/span><\/strong> Projects like the Olympics don\u2019t tend to let a \u201clittle thing like money\u201d get in the way of a great finished product (some \u00a320bn down the line in Beijing\u2019s case). <\/span><\/p>\n

For London 2012, with more limited resources than Beijing, and threats of spiralling costs already \u2013 putting my project manager \u201chat\u201d on, focus must be made on careful project finance, planning and operations if their resources don\u2019t dry up before the first gun has sounded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Projects on target\u2026<\/span><\/strong> The scale of the Beijing Olympics may prove to be unique in the history of the Olympics. No Olympics may ever spend or build more than Beijing. London has to realise this, step out of Beijing\u2019s shadow, and provide a model which future Olympic Games can follow. This can be London\u2019s project target, and a great legacy of the games. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s these \u201csoft skills\u201d of communicating and \u201cselling\u201d the value and benefits of the Games which will be London 2012\u2019s challenge to convince us of over the coming years. I wonder if the sheer spectacle of Beijing is causing London to re-think its project plan!<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

Adam <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stopping for a quick bite to eat at the Indigo offices on Friday, I caught a glimpse of the lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing\u2019s Olympic Games, confidently playing out its carefully choreographed scenes on the TV in our office … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-and-programme-management"],"yoast_head":"\nDelivering the Olympic \u201cProject\u201d \u2013 London watches Beijing - the indigo blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/delivering-the-olympic-\u201cproject\u201d-\u2013-london-watches-beijing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Delivering the Olympic \u201cProject\u201d \u2013 London watches Beijing - 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