Planning for Olympic fever

While many are understandably focusing on the benefits the Games will bring – a big boost to tourism and industry – the potential for disruption in and around the country’s capital should also be considered.

One in four businesses are already assessing opportunities and risks from the Games, according to a survey carried out by Deloitte. It found that transport and the unavailability of staff are the biggest concerns.

Yet surprisingly, two-thirds of companies expect to see no impact at all. “An event of this scale, with sites across London and through the country, will present some serious challenges to those companies who operate in and around venues for the Games if they fail to understand and plan ahead,” says Heather Hancock, London 2012 Partner at Deloitte.

Swapping suits for shorts

Hugh Sumner, the Olympic Delivery Authority’s transportation has warned commuters of disruption during the 16 days of the Olympics and 12 days of the Paralympics, even suggesting workers should swap “suits for shorts” and enjoy the Games.

In January, he told the London Assembly that “business will be unusual in London” and that the “key challenge over the next 80 weeks is to explain to both business and users of public transport and spectators, what they need to be doing differently.”

Up to 500,000 spectators are expected to be at the Games when it gets underway. The logistics involved in transporting that many people to the Olympic venues in East London could prove a severe strain on transportation networks.

The risk management steering group of the Association of Risk and Insurance Managers (Airmic) is looking at the potential for disruption and what this could mean at an operational level.

“Some organisations – indeed those in transportation, those with operations in the centre of London – could well suffer travel disruption and to some extent absenteeism,” says Paul Hopkin, technical director of Airmic. “So many organisations are looking at the potential for disruption to routine operations and how they will overcome those.”

Dealing with travel disruption and absenteeism is something all businesses should be considering as part of their business continuity planning, says Hopkin.

“During the World Cup, whenever the England team were playing there were pockets of much reduced activity in the City of London,” he says. “When you have the Olympics in London those pockets could be far greater and could give you greater periods of reduced activity because you’ve got several members of staff going to Olympic events.”

“Perhaps organisations will think about how they ensure they have the minimum level of resources and staff availability that they need to maintain a service,” he adds.

Preparing for the unexpected

Safety surrounding the Olympics will be extremely tight, with security costs now expected to be at least £757mn, up from £600mn, with an extra £363mn put aside in case of a major security incident.

Nevertheless, large sporting events are inevitably a target for terrorists. The bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and tragic hostage taking at the 1972 Munich Olympics are reminders of what can happen. 

While there is every reason to expect that the London Games will go forth without incident, political risks are likely to be on risk managers’ radars, thinks Hopkin. “I don’t know whether any organisations would increase their security during the Olympics but it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

In the modern technology age, such a threat could come from digital sources. The 2008 Beijing Games operators received 12 million cyber attacks a day.

But trying to predict what type of disruption could occur during the Olympics is missing the point, thinks Hopkin. He points out that nobody could have predicted the disruption caused by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano, which grounded flights across Europe in April and May last year.

“The Icelandic ash cloud was a very good example because you could never have foreseen just how devastating and disruptive that would be and therefore you realise you can’t actually predict what could happen.”

“There’s a developing trend over the last year or two which is that organisations are looking much more at what could be the effect of something, rather than to second guess exactly what is going to happen,” he explains. “I think that attitude will be applied to the Olympics and organisations will be asking, ‘How would we manage if our staff were unable to get around, if our IT systems failed or if our mobile communication networks failed?’”

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