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East Midlands businesses urged to be in running for new Olympic contracts

East Midlands Development Agency (emda) is encouraging businesses in the region to look at the new opportunities that are available for them to provide goods and services to the London 2012 Games.

Now that there are less than 900 days to go to the Games, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has announced that it will be awarding 5,000 contracts directly, amounting to an estimated 25,000 supply chain opportunities for businesses to provide goods and services.

With the building work on the Olympic Park well on the way to being completed, the focus has now switched to all of the other items and services that will need to be procured in order to stage the games themselves during the summer of 2012.

LOCOG is procuring services worth around £700 million, which cover a huge spectrum of different businesses. They are looking for everything from professional performers, to catering, security staff, public relations, clothing, sports flooring, transportation, reprographics, motor boats and much more.

Full details about all of the opportunities available can be found on the CompeteFor website – competefor.com. CompeteFor is the free to use, online portal which matches up businesses to the opportunities that are available. The service, which is completely free, is delivered through a partnership between public and private sector organisations, working closely with LOCOG and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA).

John O’Reilly, emda’s Business Support Director, said: “The London 2012 Games provide an enormous range of opportunities for businesses in almost every sector. My advice for businesses in the region is to register on the CompeteFor website in order to get a feel for the wide spectrum of those opportunities on offer. Many businesses in the East Midlands have already won contracts for the Games and I am sure that there are many others in the region that offer goods and services that LOCOG and the ODA are looking for.”

To date, over 100 East Midlands businesses are known to have already provided services to the Games, the majority of these are small to medium sized companies, which have provided services ranging from paving, to aerial photography, fire protection and concrete parapets.

Business Link is also running free workshops around the region over the next two months, to enable businesses to find out how they can find out about opportunities and win contracts.

The Business Link London 2012 Tender Opportunities workshops are taking place at:

 Newark Beacon, 16th February
 Boston Enterprise Centre, 18th February
 National Space Centre, Leicester, 23rd February
 Portfolio Innovation Centre, University of Northampton, 25th February
 University of Derby, City Campus, 4th March
 EMFEC Conference Centre, Nottingham, 9th March
 Think Tank Innovation Centre, Lincoln, 11th March
 Pera Innovation Centre, Melton Mowbray, 16th March
 Kettering Conference Centre, 23rd March
 University of Derby, Buxton Campus, 25th March

To register for the London 2012 Tender Opportunities workshops, email your details to events@businesslinkem.co.uk or contact 0845 058 6644.

To register details of your business on the CompeteFor website to find out about Games related opportunities, visit www.competefor.com

Caption: Chris Foster, Managing Director of Evans Concrete - one of the many East Midlands companies which have won contracts to provide products or services for the London 2012 Games.