London 2012 blog

Last Wednesday the LOCOG Programme Management and Risk Team spent the day at the headquarters of the International Paralympic Committee or IPC in Germany.

We journeyed to Bonn to review in detail the LOCOG project plan - our 'Master Schedule' - and the final draft of the high-level organisational plan - 'the Games Foundation plan'.

We have been working with Arno Wolter, the Paralympic Games Director, and his team for the last few months. This work has been groundbreaking for two reasons.

To start with, this is the first time there has ever been one consolidated plan managed by an Organising Committee containing all the Olympic and Paralympic specific tasks.

Secondly, this is the first time that, where they're appropriate, tasks that are common to both Games are integrated and tracked together.

The team in Bonn has been extremely pleased with the work we have done so far.

But they were also able to offer some excellent advice to ensure that we and the planning teams within each LOCOG functional area work to identify not only areas for integration between the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games planning, but also areas where we need to identify and ring-fence specific resources and activities to guarantee excellent delivery of the Paralympic Games.

We're encouraging all teams at LOCOG to ensure that critical differences in planning between the two Games are being identified appropriately - we're planning together for the first time, but we want to make sure we get it right.

We were also able to absorb some of the extensive knowledge and experience that Arno and his team have from working on planning with five Organising Committees - information we'll be passing on across the organisation.

It was great to see the IPC headquarters first hand and to get a real feel for what an inspirational organisation they are. We’re looking forward to continuing to work closely with our IPC friends in Bonn as we keep all tasks and dependencies integrated across the LOCOG programme.

Here I am with my 2012 colleague Sam in the IPC's headquarters: