People

My job is to make sure we're doing everything necessary to ensure that London is able to deliver a successful Olympic and Paralympic Games from a transport perspective. It's a very varied role. On any given day I might go from dealing with senior government ministers about the way we're preparing for the Games to, say, trying to understand the issues around how people will interchange between the Jubilee Line and the Docklands Light Railway.

We need to think about problems before they happen and plan appropriately. The transport network is almost like a living and breathing entity, so if you change it in one place it might manifest itself in a problem kilometres away.

We're also trying to get the message out to Londoners that they need to start thinking now about how they will be affected. One day you might have the road race running past your offices and you'll need to consider how you'll manage your staff and suppliers, and on the next day half the workforce might need to find an alternative route into work due to a big event.

I'm Australian and when I think back to my own experiences of the Sydney Olympic Games it was a month-long party. In London the excitement is beginning to build as people start to think of 2012 no longer being several years away but next year. My favourite Olympic memory would be Kieren Perkins' second gold medal in the 1500m swimming in Atlanta. He'd been written off beforehand and scraped into the final in the eighth lane and came from behind to win. At that moment I remember shouting at the TV with all my family and friends. I think that's what the Olympics does — it brings people together.

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