Underground at the 2012 London Olympics How upgrading utility services helped London rapidly reclaim a blighted district and create a world-class Olympic venue Jim Haines Utilities Design Manager, Olympic Park Atkins London, England hen the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) bid to stage the 2012 Games on a site to be developed in the Lower Lee Valley of London’s Stratford District, they were not taking the easy way out. The blighted one-squaremile site northeast of the city center was home to numerous industrial facilities—some contaminated and abandoned, others still in use—as well as a landfill, a slough of discarded appliances and blocks of disheartening apartments. The River Lee and several other debris-filled waterways crisscrossed the site, and area plant life was mostly invasive weeds. In 2007, after LOCOG was awarded the contract to stage the games, its public counterpart, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), selected Atkins to provide engineering design services for the 2012 Games, and assist in the complete transformation of the site from urban blight to the
outstanding Olympic Park. This marked the first time in the history of the Games that a firm has been designated the “official engineering provider.” Initially, the firm provided the “enabling works” for the park, essentially cleaning up the site through a large soil and water remediation effort before the development could begin. The soil remediation portion of the project ultimately treated two million tons of soil, making most of it suitable for reuse on the site. It became the UK’s largest soil washing to date. As the enabling work progressed, Atkins was given additional responsibilities including the engineering design and technical management of utilities for the park. This included the diversion and removal of existing utilities, as well as providing scheme designs for new utilities infrastructure, some of which
is permanent and some of which is temporary. The engineering design scope of the new utilities infrastructure includes: •
An electrical substation (132 kV) and distribution network (11 kV, with 140 electrical substations).
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Water networks (potable and nonpotable).
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Gas networks (intermediate and low pressure).
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Telecommunication network.
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An energy center (providing both heat and cooling as well as electricity generation) and associated heating and cooling networks.
The company was also enlisted to provide engineering design services for bridges, structures and highways in the northern section of the park. This increased breadth of responsibility facilitated coordination among Atkins’
The new Olympic Park, center of the London 2012 Games, was a ground-up transformation from blight to brilliance. Photo credit: ©LOCOG 114 APWA Reporter
August 2012
