London 2012 blog

I was delighted to accept an invitation from Sports Minister Richard Caborn MP to speak at the UK Trade & Investment’s Global Sport Conference last week.

The conference was a good opportunity to tell some of the leading figures from sports and industry about the excellent progress we have made over the past year – our Transport Plan is in place; the Olympic Park Masterplan has been locked down; major demolition work on the site has begun; and the planning application for the Olympic Park has been submitted which outlines our vision for one of the largest new urban parks in Europe for 150 years.

This year we are focused on clearing the site, cleaning up the land, securing planning permission for the park, preparing the site for building, and locking down detailed designs for venues. It is an important step forward and what I call “Making the Park 3D – Demolition, Dig, Design”.

The conference gave me chance to outline the important role our key partners will play in this new phase of the programme.

Our design team, the EDAW consortium, whose original Olympic Park Masterplan helped London win the 2012 Games, will be setting the framework for the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley by designing the Olympic Park and its associated infrastructure.

Delivering that framework will be our Delivery Partner CLM who bring a breadth of experience to the programme having worked on working on five previous Olympic and Paralympic Summer and Winter Games, the major redevelopment of Ascot racecourse and the huge construction programme for Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

CLM have an essential role in the programme to manage the building programme and help us deliver best value world class facilities with a legacy to match.

EDAW and CLM are key assets to the Olympic programme and excellent examples of how we are harnessing the world class skills of our partners to help us achieve our regeneration ambition.

I look forward to working in partnership with them as we continue to make great strides on the road to 2012.