Planning – on an Olympian scale!

You can have any number of opinions about the London Olympics 2012. You can be angry about the overall £9billion plus budget (but don’t forget the legacy!). You can be astounded at the huge infrastructure project that is going to change the face of transport in East London forever. You can be bemused about the ‘Rock man’ logo that, 3 years down the line, is still harsh and unapproachable. But surely, what everyone must agree on is the masterful way this massive project has been planned, managed and executed.

When was the last time that any of us were able to reel off the 4 cornerstones of project management with such ease and consummate professionalism as the LOCOG planners – Scope, Quality, Time and Cost – all delivered with, what appears to be clockwork milestone efficiency and powerful public perception.

And today, Tuesday 15th February, we have the next piece of brilliantly executed and masterfully fulfilled product promise – the release of the 2012 Olympics ticketing schedule. Now we’re really getting to the business end of the planning for what everyone describes, in the contemporary absence of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, as the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’.


And then there’s the numbers! Just look at them (I know you won’t!). Imagine these – 29 sports, 20 venues throughout the UK, 6.6 million tickets, countless pricing bands beginning at £20.12 and topping out at £2012, announced 15th February, on sale between 15th March and 26th April, and only one major payment method. The planning process involved in this massive nationwide piece of sporting entertainment is beyond the scope of mere mortals, and you can bet there will be ‘many a slip twixt the cup and the lip’ but you have to take your hats off to the team that sits behind this sprawling piece of logistics.

For 2 weeks next Summer, the eyes of the world will be on London – 4 billion pairs of eyes – and if the events of the last 24 hours are anything to go by, we should all be immensely proud that this little Island nation has access to such world-class talent that, if they gave a Gold medal for planning projects like Olympics ticketing, we’d be top of the table by a country mile.

Posted by Simon Dover