Sloman In The Fast Lane
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 12, 1997
The man running virtually everything except the actual competition is used to making sure projects finish on time and on budget, writes GLENDA KORPORAAL
SOCOG's deputy chief executive, Jim Sloman, was given some good advice recently by one of the people who ran the Barcelona Olympics: "If you've got a problem [in running the Olympics] and it takes two weeks to solve it - you don't have a problem," he said, grinning.
"You are going to have to solve [problems] on the spot." It's the kind of no-nonsense advice which Jim Sloman, head of operations for the Sydney Olympics, could identify with.
Wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt, bone jeans and brown boots, Sloman talked to the Herald last week in Lausanne, where he assisted with the latest Sydney presentation to the International Olympic Committee executive board meeting.
Come Games time, Sloman will be in day-to-day charge of all the 2,500 SOCOG employees and the 130,000 or so workers, contractors and volunteers as well as some 40 competition venues, 60 training venues, the villages for the athletes, the media and the technical officials, and 60 other sites such as warehouses, running virtually everything to do with the Olympics except the actual competition.
His beat includes everything from catering and cleaning, volunteers, transport, ticketing, security, accreditation and accommodation to dealing with the 28 sporting federations who run the events.
An engineer by training, 51-year-old Sloman has been in the construction industry all his working life. He's used to making sure projects get finished - on time and on budget.
He sees the Olympics as no different from a major construction project.
While the SOCOG chief executive, Sandy Hollway, is the diplomat cum top public servant who handles politicians' egos, the IOC, the Australian Olympic Committee and anyone else who has a stake in the Olympics, Sloman, his number two, focuses on making sure that the day-to-day operations of SOCOG and the Olympic Games go smoothly.
And he's ready to ruffle more than a few bureaucratic feathers to make sure that what needs to get done for the Olympics gets done.
"I dislike bureaucrats," he says deliberately. "I have made that pretty clear from day one.
"Don't get me wrong, there are some very competent people in the bureaucracy, but I've found that a lot of them tend to put process first. But process gets you nowhere. Somehow you have to cut through all that crap and make sure decisions get made."
Listening to Sloman talk, you get a sense that Hollway and Sloman have worked out a good cop/bad cop routine at SOCOG.
"I tend to be pretty straightforward about things - and [the Games] needs that - it needs the project disciplines. You've got to make decisions and move on. It's not a bad combination of skills."
Sloman personally led the talks with the NSW Labor Council recently when SOCOG negotiated a "principles of co-operation" agreement to cover the Olympics.
"We have set up all the mechanisms [to solve problems]," he explains. "And they [the unions] are very responsive to that. They are very proud about Sydney having the Games and they don't want to stuff it up."
It's a very different era from the tough Sydney industrial relations climate of the '70s when 27-year-old Jim Sloman came back after four years in London in 1973 with his English wife to work for Lend Lease, first as a site engineer, then running the biggest construction project in town at the time, the MLC Centre.
"It was blood on the streets in the old days," he says, recalling the days of union officials Norm Gallagher and Jack Mundey. "[There were] heaps of threats. Now it's far more sensible." In those day, even at their darkest, the building firm with the best industrial relations was always Lend Lease, which was founded in the '50s by the dynamic Dutch-born Dick Dusseldorp and required managers to negotiate personally with the unions.
"Working at Lend Lease taught you the value of team work . . . and that goes from the boss down to the builder's labourer," Sloman says of the company he left this year after a career of 23 years.
"People working on the Olympics are going to have to deal with the President of the United States on the one hand to the cleaner on the other. They are going to have to deal with athletes and a whole lot of other people they will have to be sensitive to."
Working at Lend Lease also taught him the importance of meeting deadlines.
"The day of the Games isn't going to change. You've got to mark the issues off. You can't let them fester." It may be almost three years away from the opening ceremony, but Sloman is determined that the Olympic organisational process will push ahead to the timetable he has laid down. In the 11 months he's been at SOCOG he's drawn up strategies for the major operational areas including catering, cleaning, transport and technology.
T HE last one, the first stage of the ticketing strategy, goes to the SOCOG board next week.
He has also worked out the "concepts of operations" for the two major Olympic precincts, Homebush Bay and Darling Harbour, with a particular focus on the crunch times when the areas will be under maximum pressure.
"On one of the big days there will be something like half a million people who have a right to be at Homebush Bay, which is the equivalent of five Melbourne grand finals. Delivering them, getting them out, keeping them safe and feeding them and cleaning is a highly complex exercise."
Sloman has also begun planning for other events which could occur during the Olympics, such as a possible visit by President Clinton during the second week of the Games.
In Atlanta, President Clinton's visits blocked up the city, sending traffic plans into chaos and delaying the start of some events.
"People are saying that Clinton is going to come in the second week," Sloman says. "Well, it's no good saying he might come. You've got to plan for him coming and work out how you are going to deal with it now, rather than then."
Sloman says he hadn't thought of leaving Lend Lease last year. "I had no intention of going anywhere else when this opportunity came up," he recalls.
"And, you know . . . life's too short. You'd always kick yourself for not having a go." Sloman and Hollway both started at SOCOG in February, the same time as the former head of the Australian Rugby League, John Quayle, who now reports to Sloman as head of Olympic venues.
At the time, all the publicity focused on Hollway and Quayle. Sloman's name was only mentioned in passing.
"I like it that way," he says, having come out of a company with a strong culture of avoiding personal publicity.
Sloman sees the test events which will be held from 1999 through to 2000 as being an important part of the planning process.
The only thing that really worries him is the thought of dealing with 130,000 people over the Olympic weeks and what could go wrong.
"The thing that keeps me awake more than anything else is the people factor. You've got a lot of people you've got to manage during the Games and 40,000 to 50,000 of them are volunteers who have special needs. You've got to train them and fit them out with uniforms, transport and do whatever you've got to do. It's a hell of a task in a resources sense."
The last thing he's worried about is what he's going to do after it's all over.
"I guess I've got enough confidence in myself to say I'll do a good job and I'll probably be all right anyway."
He and a few million other people who will be turning up for the Olympics in 2000 will be hoping he does just that.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald
