Six years to go before the Summer Olympics in London, and the approach used this August to pick a management team for more than $4.5 billion of its planned construction is already record-setting. That selection was the U.K.’s first use of “competitive dialogue,” a new style of negotiated procurement that is aimed at delivering one of Europe’s most ambitious building programs on time and on budget. 

The new approach was tailored for complicated projects. Few qualify as well as construction of venues, facilities and infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic Games, as well as the Paralympic Games for physically challenged athletes, first held in London in 1948. Most building will take place on a 500-acre brownfield in east London that will first cost hundreds of millions to clean up.