The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) was a start-up employer in 2005. It would become a unique sort of employer, one that had a single purpose and would cease to exist once the job was done. It was in the process of forming a tight team of hard-working, keen people.

In those early days, VANOC’s then-small organizing committee of about 50 people became aware, through the Olympic grapevine, of occupational injuries and fatalities in previous Games in other countries.