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Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

My Lords, I, too, welcome the debate tonight. The new year feels a particularly appropriate time to look ahead with optimism towards the Olympic Games and the Olympic legacy. I declare an interest as a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority board. My first reason for optimism is the broadly strong working relationships that exist around 2012. In previous Games, one would rarely have seen such strong working relationships between the development authorities, Games organisers and legacy authorities. Linked to that is strong, cross-party commitment, strong partnerships with business and local government and high and sustained public support. My second reason for optimism is that engineering, design, manufacturing and construction in Britain have been and are stepping up to the mark and have a great opportunity to showcase to the world, and we are delivering on time and on budget. I am not normally in the habit of quoting from the Daily Mail, which has not necessarily been my favourite publication over the past decade or so, but I was struck by something Max Hastings said at the turn of the year. He said: ""We must use the opportunity to showcase Britain, to justify the vast expenditure of public money by demonstrating that this country can do something really big really well"." Today, notwithstanding the huge challenges that lie ahead, I want to draw attention to the fact that we are indeed doing very well. I know that others will speak about the Games and the sporting legacy, the regeneration legacy and the importance of the Games to London, so I will focus on the construction project. The ODA inherited a complex site criss-crossed with rail, water and electricity pylons—one that had suffered from generational neglect. We are responsible for delivering a construction programme twice the size of Terminal 5 in half the time; arguably the biggest construction project programme in Europe. It is fair to say that there was widespread cynicism about our ability within the UK to deliver that. So far, I am pleased to say, that has proved unfounded. Indeed, the challenges of the project—its size and timescale—have galvanised UK industry into seeking innovative and ambitious solutions. Some of the less publicised areas of the work are worthy of attention. I want to talk briefly about three. The first major project was power lines—not the most exciting but absolutely essential. The site had 52 huge overhead pylons and 130 kilometres of overhead wire. In order to unlock the landscape, we had to construct two, six kilometre tunnels underneath the entire site enabling all the power for the Games and the legacy developments to be carried underneath. In all, 1,300 tonnes of steel were removed and recycled and an electricity substation is now completed and operational. The handling of material created by demolition was a huge challenge too, but 97 per cent has been reclaimed and reused. A huge operation has taken place to clean and reuse thousands of tonnes of soil, which otherwise would have had to be transported offsite. The so-called soil hospital is well worth a visit. It is somewhat surreal. Huge washing machines shake and clean the soil free of contamination including the tar, petrol and oil of many years and produce clean material that is being used in the creation of correct land levels, foundations and parklands. The second area that I find very interesting is logistics. Usually, understandably, attention focuses on the big venues, but underpinning all the work that happens every day on the site is a colossal logistical operation—a warlike operation. Tonnes of material have to be delivered every single day and 9,000 workers have to get in and out of the site, so the logistics centre co-ordinates the arrival of four delivery vehicles a minute at the construction site, which is now reaching its busiest phase, which will reach a vehicle every 12 seconds at its peak. The ODA’s road logistics centres on the M11 and in Barking manage deliveries to the Olympic Park. They take vehicles from the north and west through one centre and through the south and south-east to the other centre. Deliveries go to the centre to be screened for security purposes and are then recorded on to the tracking module. They are taken on to the site at regular intervals so that no time is wasted. Access to the site is difficult, as many of your Lordships know, as it is blocked by waterways, dual carriageways and railways. However, those barriers of rail and water have now been turned to advantage, allowing the more efficient delivery of materials and helping to achieve sustainability targets. The target of using water—in other words, barges—and rail to shift half of all materials has been exceeded. Over the construction period, 4 million tonnes of goods will be moved by rail, saving 120,000 tonnes of carbon and reducing congestion on the roads around London. My final example is the aquatic centre—perhaps the iconic symbol of the Games. This is the site on which a lot of media and public attention will focus. Everyone knows about the design and the architect, but I think that people are less aware of the detail of the massive construction and the challenges that have had to be faced in order to deliver that design. The 3,000 tonne steel roof was fabricated off site and assembled on to temporary supports. Then the so-called big lift began. It is fair to say that you could feel, even measure, the tension in the air as the structure was moved literally inch by inch on to its three permanent supports. The steel trusses were fabricated in Newport and the plate was produced in Gateshead, Motherwell and Scunthorpe—it has been a great UK-wide project. As an ODA board member, I am rather proud of the innovation that has been achieved so far in design, in health and safety, in planning and in the pioneering work in sustainable construction. I am also proud of the effect on employment, about which my noble friend the Minister has spoken. I hope that there will be a wider and longer-term effect in raising the levels of interest among those still at school not just in sport but in the great opportunities that will be open to them in engineering, construction, planning and the development of Britain in the coming decades. No doubt others will be more negative and I do not belittle for a minute the huge challenges that lie ahead of us, but I hope that we can pause today to celebrate what has been achieved by some extremely talented unsung heroes around the country and the teams of workers involved in the planning and construction of the site on a day-to-day basis.