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• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

So it has been sorted now and it will be finished by September? That is what you are saying?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

I was listening to what you were saying to John Biggs and I take on board that you have steering groups of all sorts looking at how you develop the facilities with their legacy beyond the Games in mind. Can I just seek some clarification then? Are you saying that you already have teams of people in place who are organising proper financial and business plans for these venues, so they can be seamlessly transferred after the Games to groups who will then be taking them on to use them in the future?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

So the newts will be rehoused?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

You talk about changing scope as being a risk. I am a representative for the area and my constituents have a whole range of regeneration aspirations from the Games. If we take the example of bridges, which you cited as being quite an expensive part of your work, as I understand it there is some unhappiness at present that some of the bridge proposals are presented as being temporary. I am pretty sure it would be relatively cheaper to build a bridge which had a life of 12 weeks in 2012 as against a bridge which had a life of...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

On this part of the question then, you say the biggest risk is about the change in peoples' specification for the work. I have been involved in regeneration projects where the biggest risk turned out to be build cost inflation. You are not figuring that as being a big contributor?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

The basic lesson from Wembley is that a fixed cost contract is a bit of a mirage in a scenario like this.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

Finally, given that you have milestones and key milestones and a set date to achieve it, would it not have been better to have set up bonus payments rather than contingency sums, given that is going to be the name of the game - getting to key stages at key times at critical points? Clearly we would rather be giving them money for achieving that, rather than spending their time making those claims, which invariably half the building trade does.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

Sir Roy, if we accept the Government figures as the upper limits to the expenditure on the Olympics, I think the key thing is the management of the contingencies. I am worried that we find ourselves in contracts with contractors who then spend most of their time making claims for the contingencies. They are very generous; about 60% of the build costs. I have certainly had that experience of managing projects myself. What do you have lined up in the procurement arrangements with contractors which make sure they focus and achieve the milestones, rather than putting in the estimators to...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

Obviously you have not given us figures so, to a certain extent, we have got to conjecture what they are but, say, the cost of the Stadium in your budget is £250 million - I do not know if that figure is correct or not - and then you discover that, lo and behold, now £300 million is the true cost. Does that extra £50 million come from the contingency? What happens about that?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

I have a couple of questions and the first follows very neatly off the back of Murad Qureshi's question. I think a lot of Londoners have followed the different stories of the development of Heathrow Terminal 5 on the one hand, and Wembley Stadium on the other hand. Would you say your method of procurement, and within that the management of contingency and risk, is closer to one or the other?