October 2011 Archives

The shortlisting for the Silvertown Quays developer this week was perhaps more interesting for who didn't make the list as oppose to who did.

The 50.4 acre Silvertown Quays is perhaps seen as the residential-led element of the £1.5bn Royal Docks regeneration.

And yet only St George of the three shortlisted developers, by the London Development Agency, could really claim to have big experience in residential-led schemes - the other two being Delancey and Chelsfield.

Of those that missed out, British Land with Barratt will no doubt raise eyebrows given that the latter is the largest housebuilder in the UK.

Perhaps Hutchison Whampoa will feel aggrieved having lost out on its second large venture around East London in just over three months, having been pipped by Delancey and Qatari Diar in its bid to buy the Olympic Athletes Village.

The Hong Kong-based firm has decent housing experience. Meanwhile Development Securities teamed up with two strong housing firms in the form of Kier and Grainger, and yet still lost out.

As one agent succinctly summed up to me: "it's really strange that they haven't gone with the biggest deliverers in this area."

Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn has warned that the Olympic Park Legacy Company will face more legal battles if it "fast tracks" West Ham into being the tenants of the Olympic Stadium.

Tottenham Hotspur dropped its legal case against the government and OPLC over the failed West Ham United stadium purchase.

The Government said today that all parties would cover their own legal costs and the case has now been dropped.

But there could still be problems ahead if the OPLC, as expected, chooses West Ham as its tenant for the arena.

Leyton Orient chairman Hearn is afraid West Ham moving to the stadium would affect numbers attending matches at its nearby ground.

He said: "The whole process has been flawed. The last four or five years has been largely wasted and we have to go back to the beginning.

"If the OPLC try to fast track the whole process they will be challenged again.

"Someone has to convince me how Leyton Orient, with its history in east London, can keep in existence."

Meanwhile images have been released of a rather garish new Olympic structure (see below).

The new 'Z' shaped central park footbridge spans the River Lea at a focal point between the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre.

It has been covered with a multi-coloured rubber surface inspired by the London 2012 brand colours.

It is one of more than 30 bridges in the Olympic Park - bet it is the most memorable...

Such has been the success of the 2012 Olympic development, for the first time ever the intellectual capital of a major UK construction project has been captured.

The Olympic Delivery Authority has today launched what it says will be a blueprint for the construction industry to replicate the high standards that have been set on the London 2012 project.

Learning Legacy is a collaboration between the ODA, contractors, professional institutes, government bodies and academia, and builds on the ethos set by the ODA of setting targets well above the industry benchmarks, meeting the majority of these and, in a number of cases, exceeding expectations.

The website will also be able to be contributed to over time; becoming a comprehensive online library for companies of all shapes and sizes to refer to.

It will go some way towards the ODA's own legacy of sharing best practice and ensuring that the valuable lessons learned on the project can be replicated by others.

Learning Legacy will launch this evening at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Westminster, with speeches being given by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and ODA Chairman John Armitt.

The Government's Chief Construction Adviser Paul Morrell will then chair a panel of senior figures, including ODA Chief Executive Dennis Hone.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "The Olympic Park is a showcase for the best of British design, engineering, construction and project management. We want companies to win new contracts off the back of this success story but also to share the best practice across industry as a whole. Learning Legacy will ensure that important lessons are shared throughout the industry."

The ODA is working closely with the following industry and professional bodies on disseminating the lessons learned: Association for Project Management, Chartered Institute of Building, Health and Safety Executive, Institution of Civil Engineers, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, The Landscape Institute and UK Green Building Council.

Congrats to London 2012 Olympic masterplanner AECOM which has been hired to deliver the vision for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

UK-based AECOM's winning masterplan design for the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games (see below) was chosen from a total of 59 submissions from 18 different countries.

The Rio site will cover 271.7 acres, just over half the size of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

AECOM said a key element of its win was the ability to use the same project team that worked on the London Olympic Park and legacy plans. Great omen for any other firms that have worked on the 2012 Games and are now looking for work at future Olympics.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was quick to congratulate AECOM UK for winning the Olympic masterplan competition for Rio 2016.

And he said AECOM had been a key part of a business delegation to Brazil in June, which the deputy PM had headed with the intention of strengthening business ties with the South American country.

Any other firms that were on the business trip will almost certainly but rubbing their hands at the prospect of more work now in the wake of AECOM's win.

What should be read into Tottenham Hotspur's statement released a short while ago following the collapse of the West Ham Olympic Stadium deal?

It is not clear whether there is a hidden agenda or just a case of rubbing salt in the wound, but Spurs has come out and welcomed the decision to end the current Olympic Stadium bid process.

The statement on the White Hart Lane club's website reads:

"We welcome the OPLC decision to end the current Olympic Stadium bid process.

"We firmly believe that the bid we put forward was, in fact, a realistic sporting solution for the stadium, along with a substantial return to the taxpayer, community programming and athletics provision."

The Olympic Park Legacy Company will soon call for bids from potential tenants, with the stadium carrying an annual rent charge expected to be around the £2m mark.

West Ham and Leyton Orient have already confirmed they will bid.

Fans, ministers and Olympics chiefs alike will all want to know if Spurs will now have another go at moving to Stratford and put their hat in the ring to lease the Olympic Stadium now.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that the West Ham United Olympic stadium deal has now collapsed.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has faced one problem after another ever since it announced West Ham as the preferred bidder for the £486m 2012 Stadium back in February.

Within days of the announcement questions were raised over how the Hammers would fund the deal, considering the club was carrying £100m of debt.

The Hammers always insisted they could cover the £100m construction costs to redevelop the 80,000 capacity athletics stadium into a 60,000-seater football stadium. And that was largely thanks to a £40m loan from Newham council, which jointly bidded with West Ham for the legacy contract.

It is this arrangement that appears to have caused everything to ultimately unwind. But more on that shortly.

Fast forward a month, towards the end of March, Tottenham Hotspur issued the OPLC with a legal letter over the stadium deal, questioning the process that led to the decision.

Meanwhile, Leyton Orient Football Club also pushed forward for a judicial review on the grounds that a bigger club like West Ham moving into its territory would be disastrous for its future.

In May, Spurs confirmed it would be pursuing a judicial review as well. There appeared to be some respite for the OPLC and ministers in early June when the high court rejected calls for judicial reviews.

But the problem didn't go away. Spurs were granted the chance on appeal to present its case at an oral hearing in the high court.

And then it really started to get messy. On 1 July the OPLC suspended an employee after it emerged they had undertaken paid consultancy work with West Ham without its knowledge or permission.

But within days West Ham had launched a counter attack announcing that it was planning to sue Spurs and the Sunday Times over allegations made surrounding the suspension of the OPLC executive.

The police were then brought into the situation and at this point Spurs made an offer to West Ham to drop its legal challenge if the Hammers called off the police, which was naturally refused... oh if only they could rewind to this point and re-think their decision.

Come 22 August, things were looking a little more rosy again after an independent probe cleared the OPLC of any wrongdoing during the stadium decision process.

But two days later Spurs were granted the right for a full judicial review, scheduled to have taken place this month.

And the grounds for granting the judicial review? It was the £40m loan from Newham council. The judge ruled that it was arguable that the loan constituted illegal state aid.

Ministers and the Mayor of London Boris Johnson have put all their efforts into trying to persuade Spurs to drop all claims and focus on rebuilding White Hart Lane. Something in the region of £17m has been offered to help them with redevelopment costs.

But it would seem that the burning issue of state aid, which is illegal under European law in a competitive tendering process, has left ministers too uncomfortable to proceed with the West Ham stadium deal

So what happens next?

Due to the ongoing issues, and the very real possibility that court challenges could stretch on for years, the OPLC has decided that the stadium should remain in public hands, with an anchor tenant leasing it for an annual rent of around £2m. A competitive tender will go out shortly to find a tenant.

And funnily enough, that means West Ham could still end up being the tenant of the Olympic Stadium....

The Financial Times has an excellent interactive graphic of where the £9.3bn Olympic 2012 budget is being spent.

The data for the graphic comes from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

It shows that £6.2bn has been provided from Central Government, £2.2bn from the National Lottery and £0.9bn from the Greater London Authority and London Development Agency.

The lion's share of the spending of course - £7.3bn - has been carried out by the Olympic Delivery Authority.

And if you hover your mouse over the ODA circle on the FT's graphic it breaks down exactly where the money has gone.

Site preparation is the biggest outlay at £1.9bn followed by spending on the athletes village and media and broadcast centres.

Interestingly, those two sites together weigh in at a total of £1.2bn... the same amount as spent on all the sporting venues combined....