London 2012 – delivered on time and under budget

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games required more than 400 new connections and 250 substations to supply energy to the arenas, Athletes’ Village, media facilities and other new buildings – temporary and permanent. With our help, construction work finished on time and about 30% under the energy budget.

Winning forecasts

It takes a lot of skill to accurately forecast energy use over a decade long project that has no precedent. But as these examples show, it’s worth doing it well:

• Our detailed energy use forecasts for each construction phase and each phase of the Games helped show technical competence in London 2012’s winning bid.
• During construction, we used those forecasts to tailor each construction company’s energy contract to make it easier to manage their budgets.
• And during the Games, comparing sites’ real energy use with our forecasts highlighted unexpected circumstances in time to react.

Smooth handovers

The electricity supply contracts changed hands five times between London winning the bid and today: first to the construction firms, then to the Olympic Delivery Authority, then to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, then to the London Legacy Development Corporation, then to the final tenants. This was one of many cases where organisations saved themselves hassle, time, delays and, ultimately, money by letting EDF Energy co-ordinate the energy supply.

High Speed 1

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link, or High Speed 1 (HS1), connects Folkestone in Kent with the Eurostar terminal at London’s St Pancras. It took four years to construct, and required over 150 new metering connections.

Smooth operations

By co-ordinating the various organisations involved – including electricity network operators, metering companies and principal contractors – EDF Energy helped reduce delays and avoid unnecessary costs, such as failed installation visits.

Better cost control

The Tunnel Boring Machines used to build HS1 use a lot of energy. By working closely with their operators, we forecasted when the machines would be running and built this information into an accurate energy use profile for each work site and connection. That meant we could create bespoke energy contracts with the best price possible which helped keep the project’s energy costs down by around 30%.