With 5 years to go, the Olympic Delivery Authority will soon publish its "final" budget. I bet they get it wrong. But I don't think anyone should worry, as it's inevitable.
It seems that there's a strong political drive to finalise a number soon - and the Olympic Delivery Authority is due to confirm its 'final' budget sometime in the next few weeks. I'm prepared to make a bet with you right no...that whatever number they put in the budget next month will be some distance south of the real number that gets spent. How do I know this? When you deliver projects lasting more than a couple of months (and bear in mind we have 5 years to run before 2012) there are normally four variables you can manipulate to ensure success.
Time - except in this case (like Y2K) it's fixed.
Quality - except why would you want to deliver a mediocre games?
Scope - except I can't see them agreeing to drop any sports from the agenda just to make life easier
Cost - resources including cash, people, equipment etc.
So is anything is going to flex in this project, it's cost. And unless the ODA has a super-human planning team which has genuinely thought of everything with five years to go - it's a fair bet that costs will rise.
We should be sanguine about this. The cost is the cost. We just don't know (because it's impossible to predict accurately) what the cost will be. Does this mean we should allow the ODA to spend whatever it wants? Of course not. As well as its 2007 budget prediction the ODA will be subject to unprecedented scrutiny between now and the opening ceremony, and for some time after that. But let's for once be honest and recognise that the cost of the Olympics will continue to rise between now and 2012. What will determine the success of the project will be the quality of the London Olympic Games - not the final number in the accounts.
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