15 November 2012

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) technology team was last night presented with the Outstanding Contribution to IT Award at the UK IT Industry Awards, run by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and Computing. The Award was presented by comedian Ed Byrne at the Awards dinner held at Battersea Park Events Arena.

The award celebrates both the team and the technology that brought us the Games which have been described as “the greatest show on earth; the most difficult logistical operation demanded of any country in peacetime.”

The winner of the Award is personally selected by David Clarke MBE, Group Chief Executive Officer for the Institute and Computing’s Publisher, Tom Wright.

David Clarke says: “Selecting LOCOG as the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Contribution to IT Award was easy; the team thoroughly deserve to be recognised for their work. What is really impressive is that LOCOG not only innovated and created the most technology enabled Games of all time, but they have also created a great public awareness of the role that technology plays and brought to life its value and importance in society today.”

Tom adds: “Technology played a key role in the London 2012 Games and it is fitting that LOCOG’s impressive contribution is celebrated through this prestigious award.”

At games-time, the LOCOG technology team consisted of over 5,000 people, including 3,500 Gamesmakers (volunteers) and over fifty sponsors and suppliers. During the project, the team managed over 200,000 man hours dedicated to the development and testing of the 53 systems and applications used to stage the Games. They deployed over 110,000 items of equipment (PCs, servers, scanners, routers, switches, videoboards) to venues and implemented 5500km of in-venue cabling.

Gerry Pennell, Chief Information Officer of LOCOG says of receiving the Award: “It has been a real privilege leading the LOCOG technology team to deliver this very challenging programme and we are all honoured that our achievements are acknowledged in this way.”

Chris Payne, the longest serving member of the team, going back to the original bid, said: “This is particularly rewarding for me as it marks the culmination of nine years hard work and it is great to see our success at the Games acknowledged in this way.”

Other milestones delivered by the LOCOG technology team, in conjunction with their partners and suppliers:

• The capture of competition timing, scoring and results, core telecommunications infrastructure connecting the venues, systems that disseminated Games related information to a global audience of over 4 billion people
• Together with its Technology partners, LOCOG Technology supported 94 venues (competition and non-competition) in the lead up to and during the Games
• Real time results in all sports for the Olympics available to the world (via the website and mobile phones), plus real time results for any sports (five) for the Paralympics
• Full Paralympics TV Graphics services for all live broadcast sports and for all highlights packages
• Mobile results application to achieve 12.5 million downloads (over four platforms)
• True cloud-based application for an Olympic Games with the Torch Relay nomination process
• Cloud-based printing service – myPrint
• Delivery of a browser-enabled Information system for journalists available via internet off-venue – myInfo+
• Converged IP (voice and data ) network
• Implementation of the new Olympic Data Feed (ODF) standard
• Sustainability programme for technology involving all delivery partners - an Olympic first
• Largest ever reduction in paper consumption compared to a previous Games.

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