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Atkins' London 2012 project manager Martyn Lass awarded MBE for services to the construction industry - 18 June 2012
Martyn Lass, Atkins’ project manager for the enabling works on London 2012, has been awarded the Member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the construction industry.
Since 2005, Martyn has played a key role to help transform a heavily polluted industrial site in East London into a park which has not only provided a platform on which world-class sporting venues for the Games can be built, but will provide a lasting legacy fit for people to work, live and play for generations to come.
Martyn said: “As a project, the London 2012 Games has to be the pinnacle of my career. It’s certainly the biggest engineering job in the UK, probably in the world. I never thought ‘God I’ve got to go to work’. There was always so much to do, so much to move forward – it was fantastic.”
For Martyn, an important element of the project was the development of the team. He said: “I had a young team and it was great to see them grow, both as individuals and a cohesive unit. I saw it as part of my role to encourage and help them throughout the project and it paid dividends with its successful delivery. I hope they will now take these experiences, the flexibility and focus they showed to meet the client’s goals and the collaborative working ethos to benefit future projects.”
Mike McNicholas, Atkins’ 2012 project director, said: “This is a well-deserved honour for Martyn who has led the team with distinction. The London 2012 enabling works is an award-winning project which has raised industry standards for safety, sustainability and the environment, and Martyn and the team should be proud of their role in helping to achieve this.”
Martyn joined Atkins in 1970. He started work on the London 2012 Games project in early 2005 when he took on the role for Atkins as prequel and bid manager for infrastructure design. In December 2005, he was appointed project manager for the Olympic Park site wide enabling works. His previous experience in a similar role for the Greenwich Peninsula works for the millennium celebrations had already established his reputation as a skilled and experienced project manager. Other notable projects Martyn has worked on include Colchester Garrison, Bahrain University and Selby coalfield.
Over 200 years of industrial activity on the site had accumulated a range of diverse contaminants, penetrating both soil and groundwater. The site has been previously used as a refuse tip, a chemical works, a glue factory, a landfill site, bus depots, car repair yards, food manufacturing, a dye works, a residential site and industrial estates.
The scope of the enabling works across the 246ha brown field site included around 3,600 site investigations, demolition of 220 buildings, circa 2 million cubic metres of bulk earthworks, remediation works, river walls and utility diversions. The works provided cleared and remediated construction platforms for the follow on venue, infrastructure and landscape contractors works throughout the Olympic Park.
It is due to Martyn’s personal commitment, project management skills and understanding of how to get the best of the people around him that the following was achieved:
- Every milestone set by the ODA’s delivery partner was achieved on time and on budget. Atkins had to significantly accelerate the original project schedule for construction platform handovers: the delivery of the Stadium and Aquatics Centre platforms were achieved within 8 and 9 months respectively.
- Martyn introduced innovative techniques to manage the project, including the management of more than 500 sub-zones generating 600 handovers of land thereby allowing the follow on works to proceed at the earliest. The co-location with the client and contractors was also seen as a major benefit.
- With over 500 engineers and 10,000 workers on site at the construction peak, Martyn managed this hugely complex patchwork of works by building trust with the client and delivery partner.
- Over 97% of demolition materials were reclaimed or recycled and 80% of excavated materials reused following treatment and/or processing.
The success of this award-winning Olympic Park enabling works project will inspire others and has become the industry standard.
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Atkins (www.atkinsglobal.com) is one of the world's leading engineering and design consultancies*, employing some 17,700 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. It has the breadth and depth of expertise to plan, design and enable some of the world's most technically challenging and time critical infrastructure projects.
*It is the largest engineering consultancy in the UK (New Civil Engineer Consultants File 2012) and the 13th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2011).
Recent projects include:
- Major infrastructure works, such as the design and programme management of the civil works for the Dubai Metro red and green lines in the UAE;
- Key rail projects – providing architectural and engineering design services on Crossrail, Europe’s biggest civil engineering project in London, UK, and designing stations, tunnelling and track systems for Gautrain, South Africa’s first high speed line;
- Renewable energy schemes – transformer platform design for the Thanet offshore wind park in the North Sea;
- Multi-year architecture-engineering construction management services for the US National Park Service, including projects such as rehabilitation of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center and Administrative Complex at California’s Death Valley to meet the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification standards;
- High profile transport planning and urban design – our innovative scheme to deliver a diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus in London, UK, has helped tackle the problem of pedestrian crowding;
- Water and environmental projects – critical programme management of storm protection works in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana in North America, providing expertise in coastal restoration, engineering, environmental and GIS support to rebuild defenses and protect habitats;
- Multidisciplinary building design – Northwood Primary School in Darlington, UK, is an exemplar project which raises standards for environmental design and community engagement.
Atkins was named among The Sunday Times 25 Best Big Companies to Work For 2011, won Consultancy of the Year in the CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards 2010, received the first ever certification of the Carbon Trust Standard awarded to an engineering consultancy in the construction sector, and was included in The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2011 and The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers 2010. Atkins was also construction and civil engineering sector winner for the fifth consecutive year in the Target National Graduate Recruitment Awards 2010 and was awarded a RoSPA Gold Award 2011 for excellence in control of health and safety in the workplace.
Atkins is the official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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