Games theory

As the nation basked in the success of London 2012, for Shonagh MacVicar it was a personal watershed moment. Having joined Commonwealth Games organiser Glasgow 2014 as head of legal in November 2008 MacVicar gained renewed confidence from the success of the Olympic Games and this is now rubbing off on her team.

“The biggest lesson we learned from the Olympics is positive, and that’s how well-received it was,” she says. “People were so excited and that’s transferring to us in Glasgow.”

Ready

With this renewed confidence came the realisation that the event she’d been working towards for four years was inching closer.

“Suddenly it all became very real; all of a sudden we had less than two years to go,” she says. “In 2013 a lot of our businesses will become operationally ready so it’s an important year for legal.”

While much of the work is handled in-house by the two areas that MacVicar is responsible for - legal and brand protection - the 10-strong team works hand-in-hand with Scottish firm Harper Macleod, official legal adviser to the games.

Having heard pitches from a range of UK and Scotland-only firms, MacVicar says she decided to go with Harper Macleod because of the mix of quality advice and affordability the firm could bring, adding that the firm has “really embraced the opportunity”.

With Harper Macleod advising on employment, litigation and corporate matters, all within the context of sport, the deal offers a unique opportunity to its lawyers in the form of secondments.

“We had one girl [from Harper Macleod] who came to us as a trainee and she qualified here,” says MacVicar. “We’ve also had two instances whereby Harper Macleod has recruited people specifically to take them to us. It’s an amazing opportunity for them.”

Having joined Glasgow 2014 as employee number five shortly after Glasgow won the bid in 2007, MacVicar’s role has changed dramatically since the days when the event was still in the distant future.

“As employee number five I was part of the team that set up the business,” MacVicar recalls. “As a legal team we support everything in the run-up to the games. We started as a critical element [setting up the business] then moved into a support role then will become critical again after the games end because we have to decommission and dissolve everything. I’ve never been in an organisation that evolves so much.”

At the moment the legal team is working on everything from broadcasting rights to sponsorship, catering to uniforms, with the search for 15,000 volunteers also underway. MacVicar is clear about her personal highlight so far, though.

“My involvement in judging the mascot competition was the highlight,” she says.

What she found particularly rewarding about the competition was the fact that it was won by 12-year-old Beth Gilmour, a swimming-mad Cumbernauld schoolgirl who has grown up on the games’ doorstep.

“It’s amazing for a lawyer to be involved in creative and for me that was unlike any other opportunity,” adds MacVicar.

Get set

Certainly, when she began her career in Maclay Murray & Spens’ corporate department in 2001 the idea of being involved in a major sporting event could not have been further from MacVicar’s mind. But a move in-house to the Student Loans Company in 2003 and then to McLaren Software three years later meant she was ready for a fresh challenge when the Commonwealth Games job came up.

“I saw a quirky advert in The Herald,” MacVicar recalls. “I thought it was probably the only time in my career when I could be part of something this big. I’m interested in sport but I was also thinking of the wow factor of being involved in something like this.”

Although the ultimate deadline of 24 July 2014 is looming, MacVicar’s role will not end when the lights go down on the closing ceremony.

“My role is to run until March 2015,” she says. “In terms of the legal world and financial world, whether we actually shut down the company in that time is a key question, but we have obligations to the Commonwealth Games Federation, which gave us the rights to stage the games until December 2014.

“We hand the rights back then, at which point they are given to the Gold Coast. We’ll then tie up any contracts. Hopefully there won’t be any litigation, but we’ll be tying all those kinds of things up.”

Go

With three-quarters of the games’ workforce due to finish work the day the event closes on 4 August 2014, it looks like employee number five could well be the last woman standing.