London's 2012 Olympic Games promises the capital's biggest ever cleanup. Ross MacMillan digs in with the man delivering the valley of promise.

WHEN the first gun sounds at London’s Olympic games in 2012, the man delivering the capital’s biggest clean up since the Victorian era will be 30 miles west of the Olympic Park.

Simon Wright, the Olympic Delivery Authority’s (ODA) director of infrastructure and utilities, admits he’s not really into team sports. “I’m a big rowing fan,” he beams. “I used to row myself in my student days but the rowing is not on the Olympic Park unfortunately – it’s over at Dorney Lake at Eton College.”

The 500-acre Olympic parkland, which stretches from Hackney Marshes to the River Thames, will host the key venues for the games.

Set in 1,500 acres of parkland the area was a haven of warn-torn rubble and heavy contaminated land, when it was inherited by the ODA this summer.

Media scrutiny
Currently half of the demolition work is complete, Wright tells B&E. And with more than 100 buildings demolished and remediation and soil cleaning work progressing onto the main venue sites, he appears relaxed and confident when we speak.

With just one year to complete the clean up in order for building work to begin next summer, I ask if he is feeling the pressure of the country’s most high-profile regenration project.

“We understood from day one that there would be a close amount of scrutiny and interest in what we were doing,” he says, paying silent reverence to the obsessive media scrutiny.

“Yes we’re under pressure, but so are a lot of people. We don’t suffer from it unduly. We think scrutiny is a good thing and we’ve got nothing to hide from anyone who wants to take an interest.”

Contaminated land
Wright is no stranger to high-profile cleanups. The former director and group leader of Arup projects management Europe was previously on hand to deliver London’s other groundwork extravaganza – Greenwich Peninsula.

“Greenwich was very similar but more contaminated,” he explains. “That was an old gas works, the largest in Europe, so we had more severe contamination and the technology and regulations were very different.”

Wright’s role on the ODA is to direct and coordinate the 1,700 workers onsite involved in the groundwork operations.

The site is divided into two halves; Morrison Construction, acquired by Galliford Try in 2006, is the main contractor for the civil and groundworks in the north and Edmund Nuttall in the south. The principal contractors then manage the specialist contractors carrying out the demolition and soil washing.

With Arup and Atkins as primary infrastructure consultants, Wright and his team are on course to recycle 90% of the demolition waste.

Onsite Treatment
The ODA’s plea to ensure that London will be the greenest games in history has provided Wright and his team with significantly more complexities than in the case of Greenwich, but he says the team has been equal to the challenge. “Nowadays we are absolutely intense about treating onsite,” he says. “First of all is the issue of sustainability, we don’t want to put trucks on the road. Secondly it keeps costs down.”

He explains that although it costs more to treat onsite, it costs less in the end as it avoids paying landfill and shipping charges.

Petrochemicals, hydrocarbons, lead, oil and asbestos are just some of the noxious substances found embedded in the ground, says Wright. “It’s got the post-industrial contamination of the industries that were here before, a lot of bomb damage from the war and disorganised landfill.”

The technology that affords the groundwork team to treat onsite includes a number of 50-tonne soil washing machines. These sieve and shake the contaminants out of the soil and split it into water, sands and gravels, which are then reused.

To date, Wright says the site of the Aquatic Centre was probably the most contaminated land on the project. “That is the one we are furthest ahead with,” he says. Its previous function was as a transport hub, consequently storing fuel underground.

The Velodrome site was the next polluted, previously being used as a large hazard general landfill, says Wright.

In terms of the health and safety principles to the contractors and the general public, the ODA had to have method statements and details of the excavation process approved by the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive. “All our people are equipped with protective clothing suitable for all the work they’re going to be doing,” he says. “There is absolutely minimum risk towards the workforce.”

Facing the critics
But what do residents and former landowners feel about the demolition? Wright is predictably brisk in his response. “I think people are excited,” he says. “We’ve found local people to be very enthusiastic about what’s going on and they see this opportunity as a new beginning.”

However, despite the support, much speculation has been over the London Development Agency’s (LDA) handling of the compulsory purchase of land required for the site regeneration.

Some of the affected proprietors claim that the compensation offered is inadequate, and in the case of the centuryold Manor Garden Allotments and Clays Lane housing estate, a former community of 450 people, strong opposition has been staged.

Nearly 8,000 signatures weren’t enough to convince the Prime Minister that the 75- plot Manor Garden allotments should be spared.

The LDA has submitted plans to to reinstate at least the same number of allotments within the Legacy Park, but one holder is still not happy, posting on the campign website, “A close knit commuinty will be split after a great number of years. Three bus routes will be required to reach the new site (if we get it).”

Despite the unrest, Wright remains focussed on perspective. “You can’t build something of this scale without causing some disruption to some people,” he says.

Resident consultation
Wright says residents in the neighbouring boroughs probably feel they’ve been consulted to death on the project. “We’ve had roadshows in the planning stages, illustrative material in town and village halls and a regular newsletter to 250,000 local residents giving them an insight into what’s going on.”

Despite the disruption of road closures and heavy underground maintenance, Wright says most of the public have shown understanding while the work goes on. “We’ve had to close a number of roads in the boroughs because you can’t build a park this big and have people driving through the middle of it,” he says. “We need to provide a safe environment which means exluding the public.”

Once completed, the cleanup will provide the area with safe and suitable support with which to build the venues on next summer, but it will provide a platform for over 4,000 new homes, which will be converted after the games to form newly created neighbourhoods with new local schools, community and health facilities.

Wright says the current work will also offer future developers low carbon energy initiatives. “Part of the infrastructure we are providing includes an energy centre that will have distirct heating, a combined cooling, heat and plant and bio-fuels as part of the heat source.”

Does the man in charge have any advice for 2014 Commonwealth host, Glasgow? “Don’t rush in too early in worrying about procurement and building,” he warns. “Our programme was crudily split into three phases: two years for planning, two years for building and one year for commissioning and testing. I think that is exactly the right way forward.”

And with news in November that the work on the main stadium has been pushed forward for the spring, it would be a brave person to bet against this advice.

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