CLM prepares its Olympic delivery team

CLM, the consortium that won the battle to become the Olympic delivery partner on Wednesday, has appointed a 60-strong team to begin working on the delivery of the construction programme for the 2012 Games.

The team is comprised of people from all three consortium members – Laing O’Rourke, Mace and CH2M Hill International – as well as their second-tier partners, which include Davis Langdon.

According to Mace director Mark Reynolds, 30 of them will move into the Olympic Delivery Authority’s office at Canary Wharf in Docklands “as soon as possible” because the Olympic Delivery Authority does not have enough room for all 60.

CLM and other ODA staff are expected to move into offices in Stratford by the end of this year.

Ron Brook, CLM’s chief executive, said the consortium would be recruiting more people, with the aim of bringing the team to 200 over the next two years.

Owing to EU procurement laws, the contract will not be signed for another 10 days. Until then, CLM remains preferred bidder.

After confirmation of the appointment, no consortium member will be eligible to bid for any other Olympic work.

ODA chief executive David Higgins said CLM’s performance measures would be decided in the next 90 days and that payment would be reviewed on an annual basis. One of the first jobs for the consortium will be to oversee the appointment of a contractor for the Olympic stadium, but it will also be looking through the programme in detail as a continuation of the tender process.

Mace’s Phil Brown, who will take on the role of head of risk management for CLM said: “This isn’t going to be a question of hanging around. Things are going to move very quickly. We want to get things off the ground as soon as possible.”

He added that the team’s first job would be to sit down together with ODA members to agree on the plan but said that it was too early to be specific. “It’s too soon to even guess but we won’t be sitting around.”

Mace’s Gary France, who was involved in London’s original campaign to win the 2012 Olympics is to take on the role of head of programme planning.