Bidding For Gold (Procurement Central Business Books Book 0)

With the London 2012 Olympics approaching fast but a supply chain failure on its hands Procurement had to act to ensure success and avert a disaster .
No matter how experienced and established a supplier is, an unprecedented situation can mean that they are unable to supply. Strong terms of contract and contingency plans are needed.
Procurement can deliver in the most extreme circumstances with tight deadlines despite other perceptions.
The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games are widely considered as one of the most successful in history both on and off the track. Sporting world records fell by the way side
while stadiums were delivered on-time and under budget, something thought of as near impossible by the British public in the run-up to the Games.
It was such a success that the framework of how it were put together is being used as a benchmark for future Olympics, including the next Games due to be held in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janerio during the summer of 2016.
Procurement was a key part of this success, from building the eye-catching Olympic Park and sports arenas to clothing the thousands of volunteers. But the organising committee had to overcome a number of its hurdles to get there.
one such challenge was the high-profile failure of one supplier to deliver what it had been contracted to do so.
Private security firm G4S had been chosen by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) to supply, train, clothe, accommodate and manage the security staff needed to man the gates and spectator checkpoints at the various
Olympic venues, including the Olympic park itself and the many others dotted around the rest of the UK.
G4S had originally been contracted to supply 2,000 private guards out of a total of 10,000 bodies on the ground, the rest being made up of volunteers, or ’Games Makers’ as they came to be known, who were also to be managed by G4S.
However, in the months during the run-up to the Games a review of the security situation took place and it was decided that more bodies were needed and so LOCOG asked G4S whether it would be able to ramp up its recruitment process to supply some 10,000 private security guards and manage around another 11,000 volunteers.
Despite the significant increase in numbers the response from G4S was positive .G4S had the opportunity in November 2011 not to recruit the full 10,000 and LOCOG would have taken up the slack, but they felt confident enough to say they would be able to achieve it
A large portion of this slack was to be taken up by military personnel, according to a contingency plan that had been devised by LOCOG and its procurement team should G4S have said that it would have been unable to supply the required number.
But as it got closer and closer to the beginning of the Games it became clear that G4S would be unable to supply the required numbers and so this contingency plan was put into action and extra military personnel drafted in.
Why then were G4S, thought of as one of the world’s largest security providers, not able to source the required number of guards and have them trained and ready for the start of such a major event? Because of G4S’ size and reputation LOCOG certainly had the confidence in them to deliver but the answer to this question, something that the company themselves admitted after the event, was that it was an unprecedented situation.
Not since the Second World War had this many people been mobilised.
While LOCOG’s procurement was central to developing and implementing the contingency plan that saved the situation, it was also key to putting in place clauses within the contract that ensured the public, who were paying for the event, were not left out of pocket as a result of this failure of supply.