Building the Olympic Park for London 2012

The Olympic Park is situated in the Lower Lea Valley area of East London. When completed, it will house the Olympic Stadium, the aquatics centre, the Velodrome and BMX circuit and the hockey, handball and basketball arenas, in addition to the necessary infrastructure such as footpaths. The enabling works are currently taking place on site, which involves working with other Olympic Delivery Authority contractors to remove the existing infrastructure and addressing issues of land contamination. This creates a ‘blank canvas’ on to which the stadiums can be built.

Tips on getting ahead
To make the most of your career, be aware of the other projects your employer is involved in and network with engineers. Let your manager know that you’d be interested in working on a particular project if an opportunity arises – that’s how I got to take a sabbatical to do voluntary work in Africa and gained my place on the Olympic Park.

An Olympian scale

The first thing that strikes you when working on the Olympic Park is the sheer size of the project. Whereas on projects I’ve worked on to date there have been two or three excavators working at one time, now there are between 40 and 50. I was seconded from our highways and transportation division to work on this project once the feasibility studies and compulsory purchase orders had been completed and we were ready to start preparing the site for the main construction work.

As well as managing the demolition and land contamination work, we have supported some construction works such as river walls, temporary roads and bridges as well as utility installation. I started out dividing my time between this project and my previous project, which was just being completed, and moved over to this project full time about 18 months ago.

Taking responsibility

Broadly speaking, I’m responsible for the ‘labour’ elements of the works and am based on site. I liaise with the two principal contractors, dealing with any queries or issues that might crop up. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find it from someone who does, whether it’s my project manager, a specialist or the client. I also spend time ensuring that work has been undertaken in accordance with the contract. Around 40–50 per cent of my time is spent attending or chairing meetings – for example, we might have a meeting with the contractors working in a particular zone and I’ll need to see that the actions coming out of that meeting are completed.

The hours are longer on site than when working in an office: a typical day will start at 8.00 am and finish at 6.00 pm. I often find myself working later, although time does seem to fly so the hours never seem that long!

I report directly to the overall project manager and there are also three assistant supervisers (who report to me) and two document controllers (who help with the required paperwork). I work alongside geotechnical engineers, remediation experts, designers and various other specialists. This has helped me to develop my technical skills further – for example, I have increased my understanding of land remediation, which is a growing area in the built environment sector.

Gaining kudos

This is one of the most high profile projects the country has ever seen and rightly receives a lot of public and media attention. There is definite kudos to working on an Olympics project – it is a one-off experience and has allowed me to develop my soft and technical skills. Having completed this project, I know I’ll be in a good position to take on my next project – whatever and wherever it may be.

Career milestones

Started graduate scheme two years after graduating: joined Atkins as a graduate engineer, worked on smaller traffic-calming schemes
One year later: took a sabbatical, went to Africa, worked as part of a school-building project
One year and four months later: seconded to head office as a more senior graduate engineer
A few months later returned to my regional office as a section engineer on a large infrastructure project
Nine months later:permanent transfer to head office, was the team leader on A21 project
A year later: was assistant supervisor on M20 project
A year later: joined the Olympic Park project first as an assistant superviser and then superviser.

Andy Mateer is supervisor of the enabling works at the Olympic Park for Atkins. He graduated with a BEng in civil engineering from the University of Nottingham. Copyright of London Olympic image: London 2012.