Planning an Olympics ceremony seems a world away from day-to-day public sector procurement pressures. But there are important lessons about the possibilities and pitfalls
Whenever I talk about the opening ceremony at the London 2012 Games it seems odd to focus on contract management. What has that got to do with the creative spectacle watched by billions across the globe?
But without a robust approach to contract management it wouldn’t have been possible to give those involved the flexibility and freedom to take the creative risks that made it such a success.
After the vast and successful Beijing opening ceremony in 2008, Britain needed to deliver something radical, extraordinary and unique to our culture, but with far lower budgets. That's why it was important to alleviate the risk of such a creative approach with an assured delivery model.
Planning an Olympic ceremony will probably seem a world away from the day-to-day pressures of the public sector. But there are important lessons around contract management and the way it can pave the way to innovative new public services.
This goes for everything from social housing organisations, as they take on new housing developments and extend their tenant services, to local government, which is grappling with tough financial constraints and having to find new ways of delivering services. So how do you deliver innovative, high quality services to tight timescales and on budget?
During the build up to the London Games, the ceremonies team had to procure £80m of goods and services – everything from lighting to costumes – quickly and flexibly. But a combination of reputational pressures and the fixed deadlines of the opening and closing ceremonies exposed the live events to major supply risks. After all, there’s only one chance to get it right – with the whole world watching every move.
Directors Danny Boyle and Stephen Daldry had come on board with a big creative vision. Both were Oscar winners but neither had experience of creating outdoor ceremonies on this scale. It became clear that a certain procurement approach was needed to moderate all of these risks. If we were going to take chances they needed to be around creativity, not delivery.
Rather than contract out entirely or produce everything in-house, a semi-outsourced hybrid procurement model was developed where risks were shared with contractors. This model has lessons for the public sector in that only suppliers prepared to share reputational risk were brought in. The London 2012 ceremonies involved equal, honest partnerships – we relied on one another and all of our names were on the line.
Given the prevalence of outsourcing in the public sector in recent years, local government and other bodies might consider creating procurement systems based on a similar partnership model to maintain their own standing and ensure top standards. A traditional outsourced model means that when you get past the point of no return it’s often too late to make changes, yet ultimately the buck still stops with you.
Sharing risk and also success through a hybrid model has the same effect as legal or quality assurance structures in terms of incentivising quality of delivery and ensuring value for money. Our goal was to opt for a ‘grown up’ partnership approach rather than pursuing old procurement models where the best prices are effectively beaten out of suppliers.
This way of working simply no longer stands up - it’s likely to have a detrimental effect on service delivery and suppliers treated in this way tend to get their own back.
Despite all this, things did go wrong and I don’t want to suggest that everything London 2012 did, or even my own team within London 2012, worked perfectly. We all remember some of the well publicised challenges created when one or two of the Games suppliers struggled to deliver. But the fact that the Games were finally executed so effectively, including the opening and closing ceremonies, is in large measure due to the partnership and teamwork with a range of suppliers and stakeholders.
When you are running a live event with the eyes of the world upon you, certain risks are inevitable and worth taking and others are not. The same goes for the delivery of public services that millions rely on every day. Gambles around innovation pay off, but only when backed up by air-tight delivery mechanisms.
Bill Morris is ex-director of culture, ceremonies, education and live sites for the London 2012 Olympic Games. He will be discussing these issues at PfH Live 2014 on 25 June www.cihhousing.com/pfhlive
