Review of Team GB Size for 2012, Olympic Partner Job Cuts

(ATR) As Princess Anne opens the new home of the British Olympic Association, its chief executive Andy Hunt warns that plans for a 550-strong Team GB at the London Olympics are under review because of a shortfall in cash.

Hunt told national governing bodies meeting at the BOA’s new headquarters in central London on Tuesday that the plan depended on being able to raise £8million. Only half this amount is currently available, meaning that the BOA would only be able to fund a team of around 350 athletes, which still more than the 311 who participated in the Beijing Games.

Hunt insisted no decisions had yet been made but the meeting aimed to launch debate about the options.

"We would like to have the broadest, most competitive team across all the sports we can but we need to figure out what the cost is of doing so,” he told the NGBs, who represent the domestic interests of the 26 sports on the 2012 Olympic program.

“This was the start of that consultation process and what we did was set out a number of different scenarios from having a completely full team taking every home nation place, down to an option where we go for an incredibly competitive team with a reduced number of athletes,” Hunt said.

"What we wanted to do was enable people to get their head around the different dynamics and the financial costs of different team sizes.”

Hunt said the BOA was working to set Olympic qualifying standards for 2012 and trying to decide whether it needed to apply any additional criteria “over and above that provided by the international federations.”

Hunt insisted that staging the Olympics on home soil did not make it cheaper for the BOA to put a team together. "There are as many disadvantages being at home as advantages. It is far more complex not taking the team away to one location,” Hunt said.

"If you have 550 athletes you probably have 1,100 in the team including officials and the cost of kitting out 1,100 people is enormous."

His comments came before Princess Anne, president of the BOA and IOC member from Great Britain, opened the national Olympic committee’s new headquarters in London’s West End. They will be shared with the British Paralympics Association. Representatives from British Olympic and Paralympic sport, athletes and London 2012 partners attended the ceremony.

The Princess Royal said: "We have been given the opportunity to have the Games and the levels of expectation rise. We really needed somewhere appropriate to function from, together with the BPA, and this does seem like a dream come true.”

The BOA offices will provide a convenient, centrally located London base for officials from British Olympic sports, with hot-desks and meeting rooms available for their use.

The BOA has also introduced updated emblems to “revitalize and modernize” the old BOA and Team GB emblems. Its new slogan – ‘Better Never Stops’ – aims to better encapsulate Olympism and the values of the Olympic Movement.

The rich history of British Olympic and Paralympic sport is on show in several special displays in the building, including an exhibit of Olympic torches dating back to the 1936 Berlin Games.

With London 2012 less than three years away, the move represents a step forward in the BOA’s preparations for the Games. It follows the BOA’s 27-year spell based in Wandsworth, south west London.

BOA chairman Colin Moynihan said the move “encompasses our fresh vision and purpose.”

“ We want to create a culture that is vibrant, a place where our staff feel motivated and inspired, and an organization that is dynamic and forward-thinking. In the timeless words of the Olympic Movement: Faster, Higher, Stronger,” he said.

Olympic delivery partner to cut jobs

The Olympic Delivery Authority’s delivery partner CLM is looking to cut about 10 percent of its workforce involved in 2012 Games projects.

The CLM consortium, comprising Laing O'Rourke, Mace and CH2M Hill, was appointed to project manage the venues and infrastructure program for the Games. Staff numbers rose to around 500 earlier this year when it took on the additional responsibility for cost management of the Olympic Village, the largest Olympic project, and the 2012 media center.

A spokesman for the Olympic Delivery Authority told Around the Rings the job losses were nothing more than a "planned reduction" as Games projects were successfully completed.

“Our resources have been planned to enable the effective delivery of the different phases of the project with staffing levels of different functions varying according to the skills required,” he said.

“We are on schedule and as we complete projects the overall levels of staff for both the ODA and CLM will reduce as planned.

“We will continue to work closely with our staff to ensure they are able to maximize future career opportunities that being involved with London 2012 will help provide,” he added.

Latest figures show that CLM was paid $100 million by the Olympic Delivery Authority in performance-related payments up to March 2009.

In an Oct. 12 written parliamentary answer to a question on the fees and bonuses paid to CLM, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: “Payments to CLM during the financial year 2008-09 reflect the increase in scale of the project in the last year as construction activity increased, and the strong progress being made as the project remains on track and within budget.”

“The ODA, working with CLM, achieved significant savings of £390 million ($646m) in the last year,” Jowell wrote. These savings came primarily from reduction in scope and value engineering changes, procurement savings, inflation and VAT savings, and were applied to cost pressures as they arose, she added.

“In particular, they have been used to help fund the Olympic Village and ensuring that the program overall can be delivered within budget.”

Last week, the ODA was criticized for paying $3 million in bonuses to its 206 employees during the year to March.

With reporting from Mark Bisson .

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