Thursday 2 August 2012
My London 2012 experience: Tom Brydon
On your marks, get set, go…
As head of operational readiness for London 2012, Tom Brydon was responsible for setting up the Openreach presence in the Olympics Technical Operations Centre, alongside other technology providers.
Most days you can find him beavering away at the Centre on the 21st Floor of a secure high rise office block in London Docklands. Tom and his colleagues will be working from there round the clock during Games time, tasked with managing the speedy resolution of line faults that crop up at any of the 94 Olympic locations.
A true single point of contact
Tom explains: “I want to make certain that Openreach delivers a flawless Games. To that end, I’ve been working closely with our customers and key stakeholders, such as the police and Transport for London, to identify potential street access issues caused by Red Routes and the Clearway2012 programme.
“If there’s a problem with the Openreach network or the services we support during the London Games, we’re the customer’s single point of contact and accountability.”
“We’ve gone through an exhaustive process of pre-accrediting our engineers to work at different Olympic venues. We’ve also made sure they all have the appropriate equipment and spares, to avoid delays in fixing faults.”
Testing times
Tom has been involved with 45 test events run by LOCOG (the organising committee of the London Games). He’s also been party to three technical rehearsals simulating potential faults, which have progressively increased in scale as the Games draw closer.
Pure joy
Sports fanatic Tom says: “I’ve loved every minute of my contribution to London 2012. Every bit of footage of the Games going worldwide, every journalist’s story and every syndicated photo will have crossed our infrastructure. I’m really proud to be helping deliver the most connected Games in history.”
