The Aggreko team used this adversity as a learning tool. The postponement allowed them to use hindsight in a way to sharpen their offering for the Games. Everything had been prepared for the original opening ceremony date, but what could have been better? Our team pored over every aspect of our project to ensure no stone was left unturned in the search for improvement.
The new date also required more extensive planning, something that the vast number of languages within the team made more difficult.
After more design periods and collaboration within the team, we devised a solution that would ensure that the Opening Ceremony on 23 July through to the Paralympics Closing Ceremony on 05 September would have exactly what it needed to dazzle the world.
The first step was that we decided to keep the equipment that we had already delivered to Tokyo, in the same location. This required our global fleet and three separate storage facilities to house the dizzying amount of power products and ancillaries. These warehouses varied in size but the area spanned thousands of square kilometres.
We endeavoured to keep emissions in check by reducing the amount of generators that would provide the power for the 45 venues that made up the Games. To do so, we worked closely with TOCOG (Tokyo Organisation Committee of the Olympic Games) to maximise the grid – and a rather large amount of step-down transformers to adapt the voltage. 3500 transformers, to be exact. The finishing touches were made by our in-house software, which would ensure a smooth delivery of power to every single venue, from grid to deployment.
We had to factor in the distance between venues too. Sapporo was more than 100km north of Tokyo and we used every resource at our disposal, local ferries and the rail network included, to cover the ground and make sure that every piece of equipment was on site and deployed.
And in the background was a hive of activity too. Every minute of the day was used to get our team where they needed to be. The borders had been closed in August of 2020, which made every single visa arrangement much more difficult to arrange.
To do this for more than 300 people?
It took every ounce of what makes Aggreko so special to work for and with.