The fixer: James Bulley, the Olympics’ troubleshooter

Meet James Bulley. He is the man responsible for making sure there is a contingency plan for everything that could possibly go wrong during the 2012 Games.

It is now a week into the Beijing Olympics and all eyes will soon be on the next host, so Bulley is bracing himself. Over the next four years, the infrastructure director of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) must deliver what is known as overlay for all the existing venues. This means installing all the non-permanent structures, from seating and athletes’ warm-up areas to food halls. In case that doesn’t keep him busy enough, there’s the task of imagining every problem that could occur over the 45 days that London hosts the world – and making sure they can be resolved. No pressure, then.

But Bulley remains remarkably relaxed. “It will be the most spectacular Games anyone will ever have experienced,” he says, sitting in his Canary Wharf office. “I believe that and that is why I am sitting here doing this job.”

He delivers this line without a hint of arrogance. His confidence is the quiet, reliable kind and, according to his former colleagues, justified. Rory Joyce, planning partner and chair of Drivers Jonas, says: “James is the most capable individual in his field. I am certain that the London 2012 Olympics will be the most successful to date.”

During the interview, Bulley is softly spoken and measured, carefully considering his response to each question. He shies away from talking about his personal life, but it is clear that he is prepared to work, live and breathe London 2012 for the next four years. And thank goodness, because a lot is resting on his shoulders.

Business as unusual

Now 40, Bulley has been working on sports stadiums since he was 25. He started at property consultant Drivers Jonas where he project-managed the Britannia Stadium in Stoke, the KC stadium in Hull and Benfica’s Estádio da Luz stadium in Portugal. “Sports projects create a unique situation,” he says. “You need to think about how you get thousands of people safely in and out in a short time. We treated Britannia like a building project and didn’t think about what it would take to get it operationally ready. It came to the point when we were rolling the contractors’ white van out of one door with the spectators coming in another. It suddenly went from being a major building project to a live event. It felt like a tidal wave.”

Bulley is ready to ride the wave this time and he will need to draw on all his knowledge to ensure the transition from construction project to spectator event for more than 23 Olympic venues goes smoothly. He is confident his team are up to the job but he knows it will not be easy: “To expect this to be seamless would mean being complacent,” he says. “The Olympic Delivery Authority is providing the buildings, which is business as usual. We are doing business as unusual.”

What needs doing?

Bulley’s “to do” list seems endless, but the biggest job is the overlay. A quarter of LOCOG’s £2bn budget – from revenue raised through sponsorship, broadcast rights and ticket sales – will be spent on this. Every venue, from the Millennium Dome to the Royal Artillery Barracks will need the LOCOG treatment, whether that be the installation of basketball courts, changing rooms, toilet facilities or technology and media centres. “Take Earls Court – the venue for indoor volleyball,” says Bulley. “Our job is to provide seating for 18,000 people.”

To deliver all this, Bulley’s team will have to expand. At the moment it is just 25-strong and made up of in-house architects and project managers, although HOK’s Denver office is working alongside it as a consultant.

Bulley says that as more people are required he is likely to outsource work: “The recruitment strategy is still in its infancy but we are on the lookout for consultants and architects. Tenders will be going out from mid-2010 onwards.”

The other major aspect of Bulley’s role is risk assessment. “This process will be very rigorous,” he says. “We won the Games seven years before the event so we have four years of planning and honing before there are any serious installations. We also have a very large window to test for readiness.” The first test will be on a sailing event in Weymouth in 2010. This will be followed by a cluster of events in 2011. “We’re looking at everything from the catastrophic – like the power in London shutting down – to food running out in one of the catering units,” says Bulley. “We are doing that by planning and testing. The actual Games last just 17 days, and the Paralympics 12 days. We want to ensure we have everything sorted out before then.”

Time pressures

Despite the pressure it piles on, Bulley believes the tight timescale will be a vital element in the success of the London Games. “The deadline is essential. Without it the project would never get delivered.

We would just keep going on, spending more money.”

But he does understand the public’s concern that the project will not be completed on time: “We have never seen anything of this scale in this country, so I can see why people are worried. We must remember that the UK construction industry has an incredibly good track record delivering projects around the world. But we do need to make sure that that operational element is right. That’s why spending time planning now is crucial.”

Bulley is fully aware of the magnitude of his role but he seems more scared of the project ending than of what he has to achieve before then. “I am not allowing myself to think past 2012. It’s too scary. I have no aspirations beyond that year and purposefully so. I will have been on such a huge journey that I just don’t know where, or who, I’ll be. All I will say is that I might lie down on a beach for a while – I think I may need that.”