Lemley exit 'no big impact'

David Higgins, CEO of the Olympic Delivery Authority, has played down the shock departure of Jack Lemley, the organisation’s chairman. Higgins said Lemley’s exit last week would have “no big impact” on the ODA.

He said he did not know when a replacement would be appointed: “It might not be by Christmas or spring but there will be a proper vetting process.”

Lemley’s role is being filled temporarily by deputy chairman Sir Roy McNulty. Lemley this week revealed his real reasons for quitting the ODA: a strong chance the project would go well over budget, plus slow progress on the programme and political squabbles.

The revelations came in an interview with a local newspaper in his hometown of Idaho, where he returned on Monday to continue to lead his construction consultancy Lemley Associates. Lemley told the Idaho Statesman: “I went there to build things not to sit and talk about it.” He said he didn’t want to wreck his reputation for delivering projects on time and on budget, so he “felt it was better to come home now than face that in five or six years.”

The original bidding documents for the 2012 Olympic project put the cost of the building programme at around £2.3bn but some sources have suggested the final price tag could be closer to £6bn.

Lemley criticised the plan to shrink down the Olympic stadium from an 80,000-seat athletics venue to a 25,000-seat football stadium. “A football field is not compatible with an athletic stadium.”

He also said the process of negotiating with local businesses in order to clear them off the Olympic site had hindered the pace of the project. “Some of them were happy to move, and some of them weren’t. In any event there was a huge amount of local politics.”