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VANOC reaches milestone in Whistler

Completing Olympic venues ‘on time, on budget’ a major accomplishment
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On Track Jan Jansen, director of Whistler Outdoor Venues, stands over the partially completed luge track in August. The track is now complete and is being iced. Photo by Bonny Makarewicz.

Olympic officials will reach a major milestone tomorrow with the completion of the competition venues for the 2010 Winter Games in Whistler.

“…For Whistler the Olympic era has formally started,” said John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games.

“…It is almost a bit surreal that here we are… three winters away from the start of the Games and all the venues in Whistler are done.

“We have worked so hard and everybody has been so determined to meet the deadlines that we have forgotten for a second that Whistler is in the unique position of being the first mountain resort in Olympic history of having its venues absolutely finished (this early).”

The $105 million Sliding Centre, home to one of the fastest bobsleigh, luge and skeleton tracks in the world, is into its commissioning phase with all of the ice, which is sprayed on millimetre by millimetre, set to be in place in January. Sliders will be able to reach speeds of 140 km/h.

Skiers are already enjoying the men’s and women’s Olympic downhill courses on Whistler Mountain at Creekside. The runs received a $27.6 million upgrade.

And this weekend will see the $120 million Olympic Nordic Venue in the Callaghan Valley open to the public for cross-country skiing. It will also host its first competition on Saturday.

A public celebration of the completion of the Whistler venues will take place Friday at the Westin Whistler Resort and Spa, from 4:30 to 8 p.m.

All of the venues have gone through changes since they were proposed during the bid phase of the 2010 Games. And all of them have substantially higher price tags — the Sliding Centre is more than double its original cost of $55 million.

At the root of cost escalation, said VANOC, were rising construction costs and an International Olympic Committee rule that bids must be made in the dollar of the day — 2002 dollars.

In 2006 VANOC released its updated venue budget figures and since then it has become famous for its “on time, on budget” line trotted out at almost every event.

“If I had copyrighted that I would be rich,” joked Dan Doyle, VANOC’s executive vice-president of construction.

He is convinced that one of the main reasons VANOC has been able to keep its budget promises is the commitment of the companies hired to do the construction work.

“It shows up in the quality and it shows up in the extra effort and it also shows up in the lack of contractual bickering that goes on,” said Doyle, who has 37 years experience in public sector construction and project management.

“Everyone is just dedicated to getting it done.”

Rob Third, vice president and chief operating officer of Port Coquitlam’s Dynamic Structures, which built the ski jumps in the Callaghan, agreed.

“It was a challenging project for us and it didn’t come without its concerns but we are very happy and very proud of what we see there now,” he said.

“VANOC gave us a gold medal and said it was one of the first gold medal performances of the Olympics and we are pretty proud to have that.”

VANOC also gave the workers commemorative 2010 jackets.

“They’re like a uniform around our place now, they all have them on,” said Third.

“There is a real sense of pride and accomplishment amongst all the people that work for us… and when some gold medals come off of (those jumps)… that will make us particularly excited to have been involved.”

While the sliding centre is technically finished it will still be a hive of activity as the Track Crew perfects their skills, hand scraping the ice to ensure a smooth surface.

There will be endless testing of the lighting, refrigeration and timing systems as it moves quickly to the testing of the track itself.

“It is really meant to be the next step for the sliding sports so I think that is the number one thing that hits me,” said Craig Lehto, the sliding centre’s director.

“The track is very technically challenging… and Canada wants that and the world wants that.”

Lehto also believes having a second track in Canada — there is already one in Calgary — will make a huge difference in the development of the sport.

“Being a facility-based sport it is a huge advantage for us in having a second facility,” he said.

For sliding centre project manager Jan Jansen, getting the track finished means switching focus from building to operating.

“Now I only have to worry about how thick the ice has to be, which is easier, not how thick the concrete is,” said Jansen adding that international sport federation representatives told him this fall that the concrete pour was the best they had ever seen.

“I have to be honest, it is beautiful. There are a lot of terrific looking tracks around the world… (but) when I look at the track we have built we have something that fits into the landscape, it has a very fluid look to it and it respects the landscape and the topography.”

Vancouver’s Olympic venues will be completed by the time Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Games in August, and within the $580 million budget said Doyle.

This winter he will be watching the Whistler venues closely to see how they perform. If changes need to be made the funding will come out of the $27 million contingency.

“I have put money aside in our contingency to see if we have to do any fix-ups,” he said.

Last summer VANOC had to do just that at the snowboard venue on Cypress when it was found that a corner was too steep and too sharp.

Interestingly enough, Doyle believes it was the creation of the contingency fund that is partly responsible for the provincial and federal governments turning from suspicious to supportive and granting extra venue funding of $110 million.

“…They could see that there was a great buffer between them and us going over budget,” said Doyle.

David Emerson, the federal minister responsible for the Games said the Olympic partners needed to make sure that as the Games transitioned from an idea to the event that strong fiscal management was in place.

“We stuck are noses in, but kept our fingers out,” he said.

He believes that having the Whistler venues finished this far out sends a strong message internationally about what it’s like to do business with Canada.

“I hope what it says is that Canada is a land of highly skilled people, honest people, we are good to our word, and this will add to that image.

“I am really delighted and it is a great credit to the VANOC team and the 2,500 construction workers…. who in many ways are honorary Olympians.”