The catalyst for change: how we helped London win the bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games

The London 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games were a huge success for public and athletes alike. For AECOM, it was the culmination of nearly ten years of hard work, creativity and collaboration that helped London not only win the bid, put on a successful Games, but also secure its legacy. Here, Bill Hanway, who helped lead the masterplanning team, relives the making of the Games.

With its looming pylons, breakers yards, derelict buildings and an epic fridge mountain, the site that would become the Olympic Park was a largely run down and melancholic place a decade before the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. However, with the growth of the capital shifting eastwards, revived interest in urban living, and with Mayor Livingstone’s pledge to improve quality of life in east London, it provided the opportunity for one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects, a home for the 2012 Olympics and a new future district for London.

Let’s start at the very beginning. How did AECOM’s involvement with London 2012 begin?

Bill Hanway (BH): “Our involvement began way back in 2003. We worked with Barbara Cassini, first chair of the bid committee, and Mayor of London Ken Livingstone who saw an opportunity to deliver improvements that would help balance the east of the capital with the more affluent west. The London 2012 bid was conceived in the spirit of Barcelona 1992, with regeneration as its focus.”

The early masterplans were key to providing confidence to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that London could – and would – deliver transformational change. Tell us more about those early stages.

 “To prove to the IOC that we could deliver, we needed to make the bid ‘real’ so gaining planning permission for our first masterplans from all four host boroughs was crucial. However, granting simultaneous permissions from multiple boroughs had not been done before.

So – across the course of a very long day – representatives from Hackney, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham each had a different room at City Hall, and they worked simultaneously to deliver the permission. This was quite a feat at the time and a real achievement. I believe it really helped seal the win.

It’s also important to note that we created parallel masterplans for the legacy and games right from the start. It meant we were designing for the future of London, with the catalyst of the Olympics as an event along the way.”

Tell us about the day you found out that London had won the bid.

BH: “A group from the AECOM office joined the crowds in Trafalgar Square to hear the announcement (it was July 5, 2005). Paris was the favourite alongside Moscow, Madrid and New York City. You can imagine the excitement when International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge announced from Singapore that London had beaten the other four other cities to host the 30^th Olympiad. I’ll never forget that moment.

As the excitement wore off, the enormity of the task ahead began to sink in. We knew the challenge was immense, not just the physical work on the park, but also making sure all the socio-economic change was delivered. We knew that it would take amazing feats of collaboration to bring it all together.”

With the bid won for London, what came next?

 “Work began right away on setting up the right delivery bodies, including the Olympic Delivery Authority led by David Higgins, and preparing compulsory purchase orders to bring the fragmented landholdings required for the Games into public ownership. All of this was critical to making London’s Olympics happen on time and on budget, and to provide the theatre for the games followed by the creation of a new park for London, thousands of new homes and jobs, sporting facilities and amazing transport connections.”

The AECOM-led consortium of designers was rank outsider to win the competition to design the London Games, yet we won. Tell us more.

BH: “Although we had created early masterplans to win the bid, the Mayor held a competition to design the full-scale event. The battle was between us and high-profile names including Terry Farrell, Hertzog & De Meuron, Foster & Partners and Richard Rogers Partnership (as they were known then).

We were the rank outsiders. The Evening Standard had the odds for us at 100-1 (we had joked about placing a bet!). So – despite our belief that we had the best approach to delivering the games and an integral strategy for the legacy – winning came as a huge surprise.

I think we won because we wanted the London Games to be very different to Beijing (which we were also working on at that time). We didn’t go for big iconic architecture. Instead, our masterplan focussed on regenerating the whole area with then new 560 acre park at its core, cleaning up the river through the heart of the site, building in sustainable solutions wherever we could, and maximising what could be achieved in the legacy after the games. Our aim was to make sure that 80 pence in every pound spent on the park had a legacy use.”

How did the global economic collapse in 2008 affect the Games?

“Without question, hosting an Olympic and Paralympic Games is expensive, disruptive, and carries risks. The Games are delivered on a seven-year cycle that does not always match global economic patterns.  However, London 2012 hit the cycle at the ‘right’ time and the low construction costs driven by 2008 financial crisis helped keep costs under control.

We were also able to bring in the best talent, so the projects were extraordinarily well managed and delivered.

At the time it was felt that the slow economy meant it would take a generation to complete the legacy building, but in fact much of that work has now been achieved over the past ten years, and in some ways exceeded the original expectations.”

How did you feel as the opening ceremony drew near?

 BH: “There was an intensive focus on completion of the park and main venues in the months before the opening ceremony. As a result, a number of facilities were completed ahead of schedule shattering the historic perception that London could not deliver an epic construction project on time. I feel very proud of that achievement.”

 “At 7.30 on Friday 27^th July it felt like the whole nation fell silent for the opening ceremony. There were millions of smiling faces, and, for us, a huge sense of relief. After almost ten years and the efforts of tens of thousands of people, we’d made it.  I was finally able to relax and enjoy the Games with my family.”

It’s been ten years since the Games. What’s your verdict on the legacy of London 2012?

“It is clear that the overall improvement and transformation of East London is anchored in the original premise for the Games: the delivery of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; rewilding of the Lea River; extended public transport networks and connectivity; new social infrastructure; three new communities and job creation focussed on innovation and high tech, with programmes supporting local start-ups as well as major corporate inward investors to Stratford and Hackney.”

BH: “While there have been many successes, it is important to acknowledge the challenges that remain. As with many, if not all, large scale regeneration schemes, financial success has not been shared evenly – for every data set that illustrates rising land and house values as increasing equity for exiting residents, there are clear indications that gentrification is pricing local families out of markets  and this has not been balanced by the new developments having limited truly affordable housing.

Walking through the park though, it is evident that the transformation has triggered the ability to deliver economic, cultural, and social value and that has been reinforced by the new cultural quarter at Stratford Waterfront (East Bank) and the success of Here East (in the former International Broadcast Centre).”

“Ultimately, it is hard to imagine that the scale of transformation could have been achieved without London 2012. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are often referred to as ‘the greatest show on Earth’.  Not only were the London Games our version of this  ‘greatest show’, but as masterplanners, I truly believe that we succeeded in our job of creating the opportunities for positive change to take place.”