Governance as legacy: project management, the Olympic Games and the creation of a London model

Ever since the writing of the London Olympics bid in 2005 there has been an ongoing attempt to define the ‘legacies’ of the Games. Never has so much anticipation and expectation been placed on one single area-based project. It is expected to simultaneously: generate new job opportunities for hard-to-reach groups of the unemployed; bring about the regeneration of some of Europe’s most deprived neighbourhoods; lead to increases in sports participation; generate positive health outcomes; and even help to stave off recession in London by acting as a Keynesian boost in the midst of austerity (see for example The Economist (2013)). For urban policy researchers the London Games thus represents a unique policy experiment; it is a location in which over £10 billion of area-based expenditure has been mobilised at the same time as local communities have faced the biggest mainstream welfare cuts in a generation. A proper assessment of local impacts in this context should shed light on broader debates over the (in)effectiveness of area-based programmes in cities and whether development in an area leads to the development of that area.

It is perhaps in response to these uncertainties that policy-makers and the private elites who delivered the Games have sought to promote a very different type of legacy; one based on a transferable delivery-focussed governance model for development projects in London and elsewhere. The emphasis of this legacy thinking is focussed explicitly on processes of delivery and the ways in which planning systems and governance arrangements can be used to enable experts to get on with the task of getting things done. In the London case this was facilitated by the establishment of an arms-length quango, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), to oversee and govern the development process. The ODA was staffed by a combination of public sector experts and workers who were employed from the private sector. Almost immediately, however, it hired a specialist multinational conglomerate firm named CLM¹ to act as a Project Manager whose task was to oversee and co-ordinate the contractual arrangements for the development of the site (see Raco (2013) for a wider discussion). Rather than dealing with abstract concerns with legacies and impacts, the emphasis has been on establishing quantitative contractual obligations and outcomes through supply chain management. It is a model of ‘intelligent procurement’ in which contractors are obliged to explain how they will implement and comply with wider policy objectives in their day-to-day activities.

This transferable London model has three potentially significant consequences for urban politics:

First, it focusses attention on the creation of output-based governance arrangements in which democratic engagement becomes a managed property that is subject to the same disciplines as other aspects of project management. Once the decision to proceed with a project has been taken, then politics is to be kept out of the ‘business’ of project delivery. Institutional barriers are put in place to insulate public and private elites from democratic demands, particularly those that might disrupt delivery-focussed and profit-making activities.

Second, the economic costs associated with this model of development are enormous. The process of negotiation over project management is weighted heavily in favour of private elites who provide ‘industry-based delivery cost estimates’ that are difficult for public bodies to challenge. The drawing up of contracts and the expert advice and skills involved is also extremely costly and provides lucrative business opportunities for private consultants who are only too willing to ‘help’ government bodies deliver big projects. This explains, in large part, why the London Games was so expensive and why other major public infrastructure projects in the UK such as HS2 are amongst the most costly projects in the world.

Third, there are significant public policy implications. A privately managed delivery model prioritises the need for commercial independence, particularly in relation to sub-contracting. State bodies, in effect, lose control over where and to whom public money goes. This is compounded by rules over transparency and commercial confidentiality. The DCMS (2010) admits that it has little idea where the £5.6 billion that was spent by the ODA on major contracts ended up, as contractors were free to sub-contract as and where they deemed necessary. Under these arrangements it becomes impossible to ‘target’ spending in ways that meet with wider public policy priorities. For example, there are no guarantees that supply contracts will end up with local firms in East London or even with UK companies.

Thus, despite the early rhetoric over the tangible legacies of the London Games on local populations, it may be that its most significant impacts will be found in the fields of urban politics and the governance of urban regeneration. In the context of austerity, there is a growing interest in delivery-focussed governance models. The ‘growth first’ politics now found in many countries and cities has created a ready market for governance arrangements that promise to ‘deliver’ outcomes, whatever the wider democratic and economic costs might be.

Notes

^1. CLM was a conglomerate that formed to undertake a Delivery Contract for the Games. It consisted of three firms: CH2MHill; Laing O’Rourke; and Mace.