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Just like a good hiker, the 2010 “overlay team” will pack it in, and pack everything out, leaving no footprint.
The goal is to deliver a huge amount of behind-the-scenes infrastructure and create an innovative, exciting world-class experience for the public.
A lot of the responsibility for the look and feel of the Olympics/Paralympics and their operational success falls on the desk of Guy Lodge, VANOC’s VP of Venue Infrastructure. In the vernacular of 2010, Lodge is the overlay guy, with the experience of 12 Games including Commonwealth, Pan American and World Track and Field.
Lodge explains overlay in two ways: “If you took the venues, turned them upside down and shook them, everything that fell out would belong to me,” he says with a grin.
Or a bit less visually, he describes overlay as “the definition, design and delivery of the temporary infrastructure. It’s all the pieces that are needed to stage an Olympics outside of an existing venue that’s already there.”
For Whistler, there’s about a half million square feet of tenting, 400 trailers, 220 shipping containers for waxing cabins and storage facilities, 40 kilometres of fencing, 22,000 seats, 60 commentator cabins and all the power, lighting, banners and decorations that will bring the venues to life.
Lodge says that inside the fencing, VANOC needs to provide for a long list of functions including broadcast infrastructure and commentator positions, media, doping control, workforce break areas, tents for logistics and site management and screening areas.
“For every function of VANOC (that) has a need and requirement for space, our job is to find them and build them,” he says.
And it’s not just the competition venues that get the overlay treatment as Lodge’s team is also responsible for temporary infrastructure at the athletes’ village, Whistler Medals Plaza and the Whistler Media Centre (the Conference Centre).
Lodge says officials have been working with the RMOW for four years on the program “so that once you get into Whistler, you hit that sense of excitement, that sense of event celebration and festival.
“Even if you don’t have a ticket and you are just walking through the Village, or if you’re going to an event, you will always have that feeling of excitement,” promises Lodge.
The term “overlay” comes from the definition and design stages of planning as layers of detail are overlaid on the computer-assisted drawings (CAD), Lodge says.
“The real overlay design process started in earnest 2 1/2 years ago and we have a series of seven or eight revisions of the CAD development process.
“Each stage takes about four months, starting with your base planning, which is high level — like sport goes here, logistics goes here and put the front-of-house and back-of-house infrastructure there.”
As each of VANOC’s functional groups refined their requirements, additional detail was added to the plan, he says.
Lodge says in Whistler the venues are up the mountainside, which “keeps us out of harm’s way,” referring to the load in, set-up and tear-down process. In the Lower Mainland there are major traffic impacts, which can add to the complexity. Lodge says in Whistler tear-down priority will be given to returning parking lots to regular use, and most signs of the Games will be gone in six to eight weeks.
