Our legacy

It was the buzz word in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics and touched everyones lips legacy.

Legacy meant something different to all organisations and individuals in the run up to the Games, and everyone wanted to get their fair share of the legacy pie. Whether that was a vastly redeveloped and regenerated area of east London, hundreds if not thousands of people taking up sports they previously wouldnt have considered, or the generation of inward investment and tourism.

For project management, the goal for legacy from the Games was clear cut raise the bar of the profession.

The work of former Olympic Delivery Authority programme assurance executive Karen Elson, who led the ODAs Learning Legacy, and her team were key in realising this goal. The legacy baton has now been passed on to the Major Projects Authority (MPA), who now manages the Learning Legacy.

Just one year on, more time is needed before the profession can cite specific examples of how the Games Learning Legacy has ensured project success elsewhere. What is already clear, however, is that the lessons and best-practice examples from the Olympic programmes are being taken seriously. The most recent example of this came in the chancellor George Osborne's annual comprehensive spending review, which outlined the Governments plans to strengthen infrastructure project delivery through learning from successful approaches taken in the Olympics and elsewhere.

The numerous successes of the Olympic programmes, be it health and safety, sustainability, procurement or good old fashioned project delivery, need to be adopted as widely as possible for us to truly capitalise on our legacy.

For those who may not have visited the Learning Legacy website I implore you to do so. Whatever you are working on, whatever your areas of expertise, whatever the size of your project, there is something in there for all of us.

Lets take this forward and establish a lasting legacy for the profession.