The world's attention will be focused on the 2012 OlympicGames in London in late July as 10.8 million ticket holders, 15,000athletes and 21,000 media pros gather in the U.K.'s capital. Butfor Neil Wood, CFO for the committee organizing the London Games,the months ahead represent the culmination of almost a decade'shard work. Wood's journey to the 2012 Games started nine years ago,when he worked at Deloitte as an audit partner. “Back in 2003, whenit was decided that the bid would go forward, the LondonDevelopment Authority (LDA) put in £10 million for apart-financed bid and said it wanted to nominate someone as theCFO,” says Wood. “The LDA invited the big accounting firms to putforward a candidate for the role. I was looking for something bigand interesting to do, and I was put forward by Deloitte.”

It turned out to be a complicated process, but Wood wasappointed CFO of the London 2012 bid, and when the bid wassuccessful in July 2005, Deloitte agreed to extend his temporaryposting to the organizing committee, enabling him to stay on asCFO.

Set up in 2005, the London Organizing Committee of the OlympicGames and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is the private-sector companyresponsible for staging the games. It sits alongside the OlympicDelivery Authority (ODA), a publicly funded body tasked withsetting up the required infrastructure.

“The ODA is largely responsible for building the theater and weare largely responsible for putting on the show,” says Wood. “Inreality, of course, it's a bit more complex than that because whenwe bid to host the games in London, we did it largely on the basisthat there would be a lot of use of existing non-sportingfacilities and temporary facilities, because we didn't want toleave behind a lot of white elephants. So, unusually, LOCOG has avery large build program itself, accounting for 20% to 25% of ourtotal spend.”

Wood says that like most CFOs, his responsibilities fall intotwo broad categories. “The first is financial control, which is thebasic back office, record keeping, production of managementaccounting information and statutory accounts.

“The second is financial planning, which is probably bigger herein relation to the basic accounting function than in mostcorporates, because a lot of what we have to do is managing thebudget to deliver the project within the resources that we haveavailable to us,” he says. “It's a massive project, hugely complex,and the biggest challenge is delivering this within budget.”

To achieve this goal, Wood has a large financial planning teamembedded into the 15 functional areas of the organization, whichinclude technology, catering, sport, logistics and transport.“Their role is to help us understand the various cost pressures, toassist the functional areas in managing their budget, and reallyensure we are on top of the costs of delivering this highly complexproject,” he says.

LOCOG's budget of £2 billion ($3.2billion) comes from three main sources: local sponsorship,ticketing and a £600 million ($950.6 million)contribution from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) fundedby the IOC's international sponsors and broadcasting rights. LOCOGmet its local sponsorship target of £700 million ($1.1billion) last year, and ticketing is projected to bring in around£600 million. Smaller revenue sources includesponsorships, licensing from the organization's retail program,asset disposal and interest income.

Raising funds was always going to be a challenge, but that wasexacerbated by the economic turbulence of recent years,particularly since LOCOG's revenue targets were set before thebeginning of the financial crisis.

“It's difficult to tell how things might have been, had theeconomy been more buoyant,” Wood says. “But we're incrediblypleased that we hit the target set back in 2005. The commercialteam have had to work a lot harder to generate the revenue, and Iknow some individual sponsorship transactions that have beennegotiated have taken a significant amount of time.”

Controlling the organization's expenditures is a central aspectof Wood's job. To manage costs, he initiated LOCOG's procurementprogram early on in the project. The disadvantage of this approachwas that in some cases the organization's requirements hadn't beenfully established when prices were negotiated with suppliers. Woodsays that this was addressed by using a rate-card arrangement,where prices for products and services were agreed upon withoutnecessarily defining the quantities required.

The Olympics might be within spitting distance, but there isstill a lot of work to do. The temporary building and provision oftechnology for various venues has yet to be completed—for example,the construction of a temporary 15,000-seat arena in central Londonwon't begin until after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in June.

Nevertheless, Wood is confident that the risk of scope creep hasbeen avoided and optimistic that the project will not exceed itsbudget. “I don't want to count chickens, but I think we willdeliver within budget, which is a massive success, given that wehave had to operate on incredibly thin contingency margins,” hesays.

The last few years have not been without their challenges,however. The high-profile nature of the Olympics has meant thatLOCOG operates under the scrutiny of considerable media interest,particularly in recent months. The organization also has manyoverseers. “Stakeholders include central government, localgovernment, the boroughs, the mayor's office, the British OlympicAssociation, the International Olympic Committee, the InternationalParalympic Committee—so a lot of people are interested in whatwe're doing,” says Wood.

Working for an organization with a limitedlifespan also presented some unique challenges. For one thing, Woodstarted out with a blank slate.

“We had no systems, no IT infrastructure, no protocols, noprocesses,” he recalls. “So one of the first challenges was to putin the IT infrastructure, put in a complex ERP system and build theprocesses around that. Governance arrangements had to be built,which I largely did with our general counsel, so we established allthe delegated authorities and all the processes that we would gothrough so that there was crystal clarity in the organization as tohow things are authorized. Putting that in early has served us verywell.”

Despite the temporary nature of the organization, which willcease to exist once the Olympics are over, LOCOG decided to investin sophisticated financial systems.

“We've had to strike a balance between recognizing that we areonly around for seven years and understanding that this is acomplex project requiring a significant spend,” Wood says. “We'veerred on the side of building some sophisticated systems early onand getting them in place, recognizing that we would be far toobusy in the last 18 months of the project to be changing our ITinfrastructure.”

The organization's rapid expansion represents anothersignificant challenge. Once the bid was won in 2005, LOCOG startedwith around 20 employees and was comparable to a small familybusiness with a simple accounting system. Today, it has 5,500employees, and at the height of the games, its workforce will bebolstered by around 100,000 contractors and 70,000 volunteers.LOCOG has evolved into the equivalent of a FTSE 100 organization interms of size and complexity. “We have an incredibly back-endedproject,” Wood says. “In our first year of operation, we spent lessthan 0.5% of our total budget. In our final year, we will spendover 75% of the total, so there's a huge amount to deliver and,therefore, keep control of in the last 12 months.”

LOCOG may have ramped up quickly, but once the Olympics areover, it will be wound down even more rapidly—essential if theorganization is to preserve any operational surplus it generates.Wood plans to complete the last financial statements in March 2013and formal liquidation is scheduled to follow three months later.“If this is successful, it will be the fastest liquidation in thehistory of the games,” he says. “We've been working on ourdissolution plans for the last 18 months. On Sept. 10, the dayafter the closing ceremony for the Paralympic Games, most peoplewill leave, other than a small dissolution team.”

This will mark the end of an era for Wood, who was made a Memberof the British Empire, a government honor, in 2006 for his work onthe Olympic bid. But with a role ready and waiting at DeloitteConsulting, this won't be too much of a concern for the47-year-old.

“My plan is to go back to Deloitte, where I came from,” he says.“And hopefully, I've learnt some skills over the last nine or 10years that will be very useful.”

For more profiles of finance chiefs, see 2012CFOs to Watch.