Installing technology for the Olympic Games, currently London's premier construction project, is a challenge of timing and cost.

 Pascal Wattiaux, director of technology at the London organizing committee for the Olympic and Paralympic games, described the information services strategy at a recent BCS Elite event. Justin Richards reports.

The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games on 27 July 2012 and 29 August 2012 respectively are unmoveable deadlines. Not having the infrastructure in place is just not an option for either the general construction, or the information services (IS) teams.

Timing for the IS team is particularly crucial. They must meet the deadline while aiming for the most up-to-date technology possible. Furthermore, technology cannot be deployed too early because of the huge security costs involved.

And they must play their part while contributing to the overall objectives of the Olympic team:

• To stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games;
• To deliver an Olympic park and related venues;
• To maximize economic, social, health and environmental benefits for London and for the UK;
• To provide sustained improvement in UK sports pre and post games;
• To ensure the venues are used for something useful post games.

The Olympics has overtaken Cross-Rail to pole position in the capital's construction projects because of its profile, and transport not being viewed as a hurdle for the Olympic Games.

One hundred thousand people are currently working on the 2012 project. The information services (IS) team will start small but grow by 10-50 per cent each year, reaching around 100 staff at its peak.

The timeline for proceeding up until the games for the IS team will be:

2006: Foundation stage;
2007: Strategic planning;
2008: Beijing – research;
2010: Operational planning;
2011: Test events;
2012: Operational readiness;
2013: Wind down.

Initially the IS group will use the systems and infrastructures which are already in place at existing venues, such as Wembley and Wimbledon, with necessary changes evolving, as and when, nearer the time. For the new venues that will be built, the planning of how to use these, post event, has to be programmed into the pre-organizing of the event.

By closely examining Beijing and working with Vancouver a fit for purpose IS infrastructure can be put in place, one which is reliable and that can avoid mistakes made by those other cities.

The organizations committee will provide the operational requirements to the IT team. These are constantly evolving as more sports are added to the Olympic Games programme, such as open water swimming.

Given that the team have a finite amount of time to develop the infrastructure needed to ensure everything runs smoothly, test events will be essential exercises to ensure that the systems are actually working and will be ready in time for the actual games.

In order to achieve operational readiness there will be rehearsals deploying 15,000 desktops at the operating venues, which have all granted late access for these trials. In all there will be 39 venues and 50 training camps and hotels in use during the course of the games.

Another major consideration, following the games, will involve the recall of assets, including IT systems. This, unfortunately, is likely to yield only a percentage return, if previous Olympics are anything to go by.

Recall has to be overseen very effectively otherwise equipment does tend to disappear. Equipment that has been used during the games is often donated to schools, but once again this has to be tightly controlled.

With regard to media broadcasts, the IT team is waiting for new technologies to develop in order to determine the technological baseline, one which will still be relevant in 2012. However, the waiting can’t be indefinite, as the structure needs to be confirmed by 2010.

The delivery of this new technology can only be achieved through the use of partners who have to be committed early on. Therefore, technology will be 'frozen' in 2010 to ensure that all component parts of the IS system will patch together, climaxing in operational synergy.

To summarize, the key challenges faced by the IS team are:

• Operational readiness;
• Legacy / overlay;
• Organizational ramp up;
• 30 years' work compressed into six with no escape.