Contracts: promises to perform

An agreement covers each step that leads to staging the London 2012 Games. Our lawyers helped mastermind the whole process.

Procurement: getting hold of absolutely everything

This isn’t just the world’s biggest sporting event; it’s also the world’s largest peacetime procurement exercise. Our procurement experts played a vital role in steering a course through the contractual and regulatory provisions needed to get to the starting line.

Groundbreaking techniques

One of our first tasks was to help find the right partners to develop the Olympic Park and other Games Venues and to co-ordinate the delivery of everything. This ranged from a flexible workforce to stadia that can be converted for alternative uses after the Games.

To do that, we worked with the ODA’s legal team to run the UK’s first competitive dialogue under the EU’s (then) new public procurement rules. This was a dynamic process.

We fielded two teams of lawyers: one to draft, one to keep up negotiations with the competing bidders, so not a minute was wasted.

Complexity and scale

Some of the procurement contracts our lawyers have handled, together with the team at LOCOG, include:

  • accommodation agreements for one million bed nights across more than 300 hotels;
  • charter agreements for 1,400 buses;
  • agreements for catering, cleaning and waste for the various venues;
  • interdependent design, engineer and manufacturing contracts for 10,000 Olympic Torches; and
  • hiring 100,000 Portaloos and 10,000 temporary seats.

Contracts for everything under the sun

And other contracts we've helped with include:

  • contracts for everything from seating to signing to decorating;
  • arrangements for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. That’s everything from hiring the rehearsal spaces to clearing the IP rights in music to arranging for live relays to outdoor big screens;
  • leases for the primary data centre, the IT nerve centre for the whole show;
  • sponsorship deals for the Olympic Torch Relay, including Samsung, Coca-Cola and Lloyds and for the Paralympic Torch Relay with BT, Lloyds and Sainsbury’s;
  • interface agreements with the Crossrail project to make sure the Games aren’t interrupted by works for London’s overground rail project; and
  • hundreds of other arrangements in specialist areas relating to IP/IT, Real Estate and Employment.

Harnessing technology

A lot of the contracts we designed are for online use: LOCOG needed to engage with thousands of people, particularly volunteers, and with nominees for the Olympic Torch Relay. We came up with clear, simple, user-friendly formats that made it easy for people to sign up to play their part in the Olympic adventure.

No second chance

With the Games, there’s no second chance. Every commitment we’ve helped nail down plays a role in meeting a single deadline: Games time. The world can’t be kept waiting, so we’ve used inventive legal ways to avoid problems before they happen.

Our usual business

Although it’s an out-of-the-ordinary event, in many ways it’s been ‘business as usual’ for us. We’re used to helping clients make massive things happen – like constructing the Channel Tunnel or arranging finance for a power plant or capturing a global brand.

The skills and qualities that make us leaders in fields such as mergers and acquisitions and finance are the same ones we’ve used to help get London 2012 where it is today: on time and within budget.

OK. So our lawyers will probably never make it into the hundred metres final, but they will help make sure the athletes do…

Find out more about procuring for watersports medals, beer and tickets and Portaloos and temporary seating.

We’d love to tell you more. Contact Sally Roe for more details of our contracts experience on the road to London 2012.

Naomi Nettleton
  • Naomi Nettleton, Associate
Secondees with medals
  • Secondees with medals
No one wants long queues at Heathrow so I'm working with the UK Border Agency to arrange gathering athletes’ biometrics before they arrive at the airport to enable pre-screening and then fast tracking through immigration. Andrew McQuaid, Trainee
Did you know…
to make it happen, a lot of people have had to make a lot of promises about what they’ll do, where, how and when. As lawyers, one of our jobs is to make those hundreds of thousands of promises stick, and to make sure they fit in with each other.
Kate Cooper
We need absolute certainty of supply, and we need to think through and avert any risks associated with that supply well ahead of time. You can’t just say to an athlete that their medal’s stuck in the post or that the Torch Relay has to start late because the production deadlines for the torch have been missed. Kate Cooper, Associate
Sally Roe
  • Sally Roe, Partner