The London 2012 Olympics have attracted much media attention in the run up to the event. Will the venues be ready? Will the transport systems work? Security? Ticketing? Public interest? More than 12 months before the opening ceremony, organisers used a series of test events for different sports to run through and model the operations required for both the month-long Olympic Games and Paralympic events that follow.
The use of contingency planning is an important part of most business operations. Planning for the unexpected is a difficult challenge at the best of the times and when an event passes off smoothly the expenditure on running simulations can seem like wasted money. However, when things do go wrong, questions are always asked about why the business did not have the right contingencies in place. This has been seen recently in the uproar against Blackberry, when its data centre in Slough failed and millions of Blackberry users across Europe and the middle east could not access the internet. The cost of having a back-up plan must be weighed against the potential loss of custom or negative PR if events take an unexpected twist.
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