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Delivering a world class transport system for the Games

Mike, ODA Transport team

Delivering a world-class transport system for the Games

Mike, ODA Transport team,
01 Aug 2008
Last week, members of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) Transport team were out in force at the hallowed ground of cricket - Lord's (unless you are a Yorkshire person that is!) We were not there to play cricket but to attend an awards ceremony, representing our colleagues from the Transport team.

Why were we there? Well, the ODA Transport team, along with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and our delivery partners, have the job of delivering transport for the London 2012 Games. Together, we need to get all spectators and the Olympic Family safely and on time to the venues.

The ODA is making a lot of enhancements to transport infrastructure in and around London and these improvements must be closely monitored and coordinated. With so many transport projects on the go, we needed to make sure that our team members knew what they had to deliver, when it had to be delivered and why it was important.

So, last year we developed a set of management arrangements that would help the team meet its objectives and closely monitor projects. This 'quality management system' was certified by Lloyds Register to the international standard ISO 9001-2000.

A representative from each team was chosen to help train colleagues on the new management system. As part of our continuous improvement approach, we decided to enter the London Excellence Awards. This is a partner organisation of the Chartered Quality Institute. Organisations entering the awards are assessed on their management systems and how well they deliver customer satisfaction. Leadership, reporting and overall performance are also considered.

Compared to other entries, we had not been running our system for long so it was a huge boost to our confidence when we were nominated as a finalist. Now we had to find time to get dressed up and attend the awards ceremony at Lord's!

The team had a great night and met a host of other people from organisations striving for excellence. Even though we did not win, we know we are heading in the right direction to delivering world-class transport for the Games.
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3 Comments on this post
03 August 2008, ruref said:

"Together, we need to get all spectators and the Olympic Family safely and on time to the venues". Mike, ODA Transport Team. I'd like to make a suggestion which, if taken on board, I believe would be welcomed by almost every visitor to the Games. My wife and I attended the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, where the public transport system consists of buses, underground, local rail as well as a great tram network. For the duration of the Games, anyone possessing a ticket for any event, was given FREE access to all modes of transport for the whole of the day of the event. All travellers had to do was show for inspection the relevant ticket, (or stub when travelling after the event they had attended) on the particular mode of travel they were using.My suggestion is that London follow that example, for a variety of reasons, the most important in my view being the time saved and queues avoided by travellers to an event not having to purchase tickets. A great many visitors will be in London for a particular day, rather than for the entire event, so will need a ticket only for that day. (A bonus for Londoners and others in the city going about their daily business would be that they would not be held up as Olympic fans queued to buy transport tickets) And how about offering free travel to anyone staying for a number of days? Develop an Oyster card linked to their length of stay, and issue that free on production of Olympic event tickets. Let's show some ingenuity and imagination in dealing with this issue. Regards

06 August 2008, Iain - ODA Transport Sustainability said:

Many thanks for your comments. As you quite rightly point out from your experiences in Melbourne a good way of encouraging people to use public transport is to offer free travel. That is why one of our key bid commitments for the Games, was to combine the cost of travel within Greater London with the price of a venue ticket on the day of that event. Therefore it will be possible for tickets, travel passes and travel information to arrive as one package for spectators. Obviously this only includes travel within London (not national rail) and only on one particular day however we believe this will be an excellent way of achieving our aim of 100% of spectators travelling to the Games to arrive by public transport, walk or cycle.We are of course working very closely with train operating companies to look at ways of encouraging spectators to use national rail and together with the many other things we are doing to support the use of greater public and sustainable travel, we are confident of meeting our target. For more information, please read our transport plan for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: http://www.london2012.com/plans/transport/getting-ready/transport-plan.php

26 August 2008, aardvark said:

It'd be great to see solar powered ferries ploughing up and down the Thames

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