UPS has completed “the vast majority” of its pre-Olympics delivery and logistics tasks, and isfocused in the last few days leading up to the London 2012 Games on delivering the final items of
athletes’ equipment – including around 250,000 pieces of luggage.Alan Williams, director of London 2012 sponsorship and operations at UPS, the official logisticspartner for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, told CEP-Research: “Our timetable forLondon 2012 deliveries is on schedule and the vast majority of our pre-Games deliveries are nowcomplete. This includes the major operational tasks required to make the Olympic Park siteGames-ready, such as the furniture construction and installation at the Olympic Village.”
He said the main priority and challenge for the company in the final few days before the openingceremony on Friday 27th July related to individual athletes’ kit.
“Our key focus is on delivering the final items of athletes’ equipment – including approximately250,000 pieces of luggage – once they have arrived in the UK, ensuring they reach the OlympicVillage safely and securely. As anticipated, there are a lot of individual requests associated withthese deliveries, so we are dedicating significant resource within the London 2012 logistics teamto ensuring all such requests are met. The athletes have trained incredibly hard to get to Londonand as our customers, we’re going to do everything within our abilities to make their Olympic orParalympic experience a good one.”
Despite the size of the Olympics logistics operation – said to be the world’s largest peacetimelogistics movement – Williams said there had been no particular logistical challenges that UPShadn’t encountered before.
“What UPS is doing for the London 2012 Games really isn’t significantly different than what wedo for many of our customers around the world every day – the exception is that we’re providingsuch a wide range of solutions for essentially just one customer on a scale that rivals any otherpeacetime logistical undertaking,” he said.
“When you factor in the timescale for delivering an operation of this size to an unmovabledeadline, it does create large peaks and troughs in activity, which we have had to plan for manymonths in advance to ensure the operation is properly resourced at all times. It is those months ofpreparation, in addition to the 105 years of other experience we bring to the table, that provideus with the confidence that we are ready to bring the London 2012 Games to the world.”
For the Olympic Village operation alone, he said a dedicated team of employees at UPS’s London2012 warehouse facility in Tilbury had constructed, delivered and installed all of the beds,bedside cabinets and wardrobes, as well as delivering all the soft furnishings, sofas and coffeetables that now occupy the 2,818 Olympic Village apartments.
Williams said many of the London 2012 venues posed their own unique challenges, making pre-Gamestest events essential to the logistics operation.
“So we have relied on the insights gained from testing and observing the most crucial logisticalprocesses at the ‘London Prepares’ series of test events,” he added. “For instance, at theGreenwich Park test event, we managed the transition between equestrian and pentathlon competitionswithin a 48-hour timeframe, moving over 5,000 pieces of sports equipment and almost 1,000 pieces oftechnical equipment, through a single access point.”
In terms of last-minute challenges, Williams said UPS was mainly focusing on the individualrequests it was currently receiving from athletes and officials – particularly as athletes movefrom one training location to another in the final days before the Games. Although this phase wassomething UPS had anticipated and planned for, inevitably some of the requests are unique.
“It is vitally important that their equipment arrives in the right location on time so thattheir training schedules are not disrupted in any way,” Williams stressed. “As we receive asignificant volume of individual requests, we’ve had to ensure flexibility within our process andour team to make sure every request is met at this final stage of preparations.”
