The Big Interview with Annie Hairsine

The 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham exploded in a riot of colour and energy this summer. Annie Hairsine, the Games’ Director of Strategic Programmes, speaks to Emma De Vita about how the job was a culmination of all the things she loves most.

Who knew Ozzy Osbourne was still alive? Making a surprise appearance on stage in his home city of Birmingham to close out the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the weathered Black Sabbath singer brought the 11‑day international competition to a spectacular close. “We knew there was a surprise at the end,” says Annie Hairsine, who was kept in the dark about Ozzy’s performance, “but that was brilliant,” she laughs.

From day one, the Games tapped into a positive vibe, and the final consensus is that it was a big hit both locally and internationally, as well as claiming to be the most diverse and sustainable Commonwealth Games yet. Whether Birmingham can continue to capitalise on the sporting and cultural kudos it gained on a global stage this summer is a matter for the legacy planners – but more on that later.

Ozzy wasn’t the only surprise for the folks of Birmingham. The city’s bid for the Games came as a surprise too, with Birmingham stepping up only after the planned host, Durban, was forced to drop out. It meant that the usual seven years of planning time was condensed into just four‑and‑a‑half. Hairsine, who’d taken a sideways move into the role, joined the Organising Committee in December 2019. “All my life I’ve been involved in sport in one way or another, so having the opportunity to combine my professional career with sport and be a part of such a big event was something that I couldn’t turn down,” she explains.

Having spent 25 years in project and programme management across tech, science and engineering, and before that as a Captain in the British Army working as an engineering workshop manager, being offered the role was clearly an opportunity not to be missed. As Director of Programme Management and Integrated Planning, Hairsine was focused on establishing programme management principles during the planning phase through a central project management office (PMO) that was responsible for reaching out to the whole organisation to make sure they could monitor and track the programme, but also work with the team so that they understood the plans.

“I had a team of five, and it was fair to say I was picking up a lot of the stuff that had been done, but it was then about implementing it as the wider organisation was growing. Imagine, we had about 90 people when I arrived, and by the time we delivered the Games we were pretty close to 2,000 people. You go from being an SME to being a pretty impressive organisation in a very short period of time,” she says.

After dealing with a considerably reduced planning time, the Games faced its second challenge three months later when COVID‑19 hit. Working remotely meant recruiting, inducting and training a rapidly growing team (from 90 people before lockdown to 450 when it was lifted) . But one of the objectives set for Birmingham was to make sure that the Games were being delivered by the West Midlands. “So, it wasn’t a group of ‘Gamers’ as we might refer to them, coming in – we were recruiting locally. But when you do that with people who have not worked in Games before and have not necessarily worked in sports, it’s a steep learning curve, and trying to address that during lockdown was incredibly difficult,” Hairsine says.

These difficulties were compounded by the pressure to make up for lost planning time. “Part of the ethos is: how do we do things more efficiently, more effectively? Looking at resourcing, planning, budgets and our overall ambition and making sure that it fits within a shortened timeframe. The ambition was there but it was obviously a little bit challenging then to do that through COVID‑19,” she says.

But the relentless zeal for being as effective and efficient as possible led to greater innovation, believes Hairsine. “This is all about: how do we encourage more people or enable more nations to be able to host Games like this and make them more affordable? So looking at innovative ways to deliver the Games and the accommodation and the transport solution, that was all a part of it,” she says. High‑level strategic objectives were set very early around being the most sustainable Games, but also being the most diverse. “We set some pretty high bars that we wanted to address despite the shorter timeline, and the team have worked incredibly hard to achieve those,” she says.

When it came to housing the athletes, the original plan had been to locate them centrally in one purpose‑built village that was being accelerated for the Games, and that would become a legacy project. The onset of COVID‑19 put paid to that idea, says Hairsine – the programme was no longer achievable. “We had to look for alternative accommodation and then you have to be quite smart, and you have to be thinking on your feet. So, we ended up with a split‑village model whereby we used university accommodation and hotels.

“If we look forward to Victoria (host of the 2026 Commonwealth Games), which is just about to start the planning process, they’re going for a regional delivery model… so they will have to go for that sort of split village model again. Maybe it wasn’t our original plan, but it’s worked incredibly well,” she says.

At the start of 2022, Hairsine’s team shifted from its planning phase into the readiness phase, running everyone involved through different scenarios that could happen at Games time, including partners like West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council. When the Games started in July 2022, the programme then moved into operational mode, with the team responsible for overseeing delivery in the Games Operation Centre.

“We’ve got to be really agile on our feet and be able to respond to things as they arise. It reminds me of my military days when you’re in the operation centre and you’re listening and observing – thinking on your feet and responding immediately.

“By the time you get to the point where the athletes arrive, there’s a sense of, ‘OK, there’s no stopping now.’”

She found the opening ceremony “really quite emotional because you think of the amount of work, everything that the teams have gone through to deliver that opening ceremony. The success we had in the delivery was just phenomenal.”

All eyes are now on the legacy the Games will deliver to Birmingham and the West Midlands. Hairsine says that work began on legacy plans and programmes two years ago, working with local partners (primarily Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Combined Authority and West Midlands Police) to make sure that “it’s not the Organising Committee that owns the legacy but the local community”, she says. The focus has been on raising the profile of existing social projects and putting a youth programme in place, sporting projects and the upskilling of people for the Games.

The Sandwell Aquatic Centre, purpose built for the Games, will be handed over to the local community as a state‑of‑the‑art swimming and fitness centre once it has been through its transition phase. The refurbished Alexander Stadium, where the athletics events were held, is now ready for any international sporting event. “Everybody has seen on screen that we in Birmingham now have got the capability to deliver international‑class facilities and events. Having that capability opens up the opportunity for the city to host future games,” believes Hairsine.

Birmingham lags behind on its employment rate and the skills of the local population. The city has struggled to shake off its post‑industrial ‘depressed’ demeanour and the hope is that the lasting creative buzz of the Games will reignite the city, as happened in Manchester and Glasgow. “The Games have changed the image of Birmingham,” she says. “Just getting people to the city centre and realising what Birmingham has to offer – I think it’s put Birmingham on the map.”

Comparison with the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in 2002, which were hailed as catapulting the city into a more confident and ambitious version of itself, is inevitable. Hairsine had alumni from the Manchester, Glasgow and Gold Coast games on her team, and she’s been sure to learn every lesson and borrow every innovation that this library of knowledge gave her. But there was something unique about Birmingham, too. “There’s been a natural synergy between the diversity of Birmingham and the diversity of the Commonwealth,” she says.

It’s been a personal revelation for her, too. “I openly admit that I’ve come on quite a journey over the past two years working with different types of people, different communities… Just seeing the value of being able to listen to different opinions and perspectives. And while you might not agree, actually just listening to them gives you the opportunity to see things in a different light and challenge yourself,” she reflects.

It’s a long way from the elite Army officer academy at Sandhurst. Hairsine joined the Army on graduating from Cambridge. She saw it as a career that combined her studies in electrical engineering, her passion for sport and adventure training, and the opportunity to go on the Army’s officer training at Sandhurst and understand its leadership model.

The Army helped define her leadership style. “The one thing that stayed with me was the motto at Sandhurst, ‘Serve to lead’… as I’ve gone through my career, you understand how you can’t just expect people to do things that you tell them to do. You’ve got to pull up alongside them, coach them, mentor them, work with them to deliver.” She likes to roll up her sleeves, get her hands dirty and get stuck in. It’s partly because she grew up on a farm, the eldest of three girls, where she was expected to help out with the animals and tractors from an early age.

“A lot of people refer to that as being one of my traits here in Birmingham – that there might be a lot going on, but it takes quite a lot to see the stress in my eyes. Military training teaches you to deal with a lot of things going on at once – having that capacity to scout out everything that is going on and then prioritise accordingly,” she says.

As a girl, Hairsine loved running and swimming, and it was her grandmother who inculcated in her a life‑long love of hockey, first playing and most recently as a Games official. At Cambridge, she rowed in the Women’s Blue Boat. “There’s nothing like the teamwork in a rowing eight, where everybody has to be in sync,” she says. Team sport has given her valuable experience to draw on in her work. The most important things to get right in project teams are “communication, being able to listen, but also being able to give them direction when needed – or an objective or a vision, something to buy into.”

Hairsine stumbled across project management after joining a tech consultancy on leaving the Army, where she was focused on delivering projects for clients. What she enjoys is “having the visibility of the whole project from start to finish but being able to understand how everything fits together”. She finished her role with the Birmingham Games at the end of September, spending the final weeks handing over to the team running the Victoria Games. By the time this is published, she’ll be getting stuck into her next role looking after the 2023 Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad and Tobago.

As a female senior leader in the project profession, Hairsine knows that she’ll be a role model to those coming up. It’s a responsibility she is happy to assume.

“To any young female, I would just say dare to dream, don’t hold back. When I was going through my younger career I saw a lot of women hitting a ceiling and we have to just smash through it. Women should be encouraged to really aim high and keep pushing and keep asking. I really do believe there’s the appetite and the opportunity for women to be themselves and to flourish and make their mark.”

Just like Hairsine continues to do.