Planning is now in full swing at the Victoria 2026 Commonwealth Games global headquarters in the Deakin Waterfront precinct.
Local MPs Christina Couzens and Darren Cheeseman visited Victoria 2026 HQ this week to officially open the offices and speak to more than 50 staff members who have already started working from the premises.
Victoria 2026 chief officer Jeroen Weimar said it was a pleasure to have the MPs meet his staff and tour the building they’ve been working in since September last year.
“For us, today is to recognise that we’ve landed now, we’ve got our head office up and running here in Geelong,” Mr Weimar said.
“Obviously we’re keen to work with our local stakeholders, so it’s great to get the two local MPs down here to officially open the building.
“They welcomed our staff here and said, we’re really proud of the work you’re doing and we want to be a part of what you’re about.”
With the organising committee having established many of the broad strokes of the Games, the Victoria 2026 office is currently working on detailed planning around how the Games will operate.
“We’re now doing all the detailed planning work around how the venues are going to work in particular, how transport’s going to work, what the security arrangements will be,” Mr Weimar said.
“It’s a big job; we’ll end up with around 1.1 million ticket sales across the 12 days of the Commonwealth Games program, we’ll have to move 5000 or so athletes, and we’ll have around 40,000 staff working during the Games’ peak.
“Moving all these people around is going to be a big part of our challenge, but that’s the work we’re up for.”
As the Games get closer the Victoria 2026 workforce will grow exponentially, and work has already begun on expansion of the offices to prepare for that, moving forward with plans to double the floorspace and triple desk numbers.
“At the moment we have around 75 people on our team who are doing all the planning work for the Games,” Mr Weimar said.
“By the time we get to ‘25 — 12 months out from the Games — we’ll have hundreds of people working on the program, not just within the organising committee but also within all of our partners, to bring these Games together.”
