LONDON -- David Howman admits that his newly created Athletics Integrity Unit has a mountain to climb and is under pressure to do it quickly.
Howman, the former director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), is now chairman of the AIU, a body put at the centre of IAAF reforms designed to make track and field a sport that people can believe in again.
On the eve of the IAAF's showpiece event, the World Championships in London, soon-to-be-retired icon Usain Bolt warned athletics will die if its competitors don't stop doping. Howman's unit, meanwhile, was just about to complete its fourth month and was still deciding on strategy for managing a wide range of programmes tackling drugs use, betting, bribery, manipulation of results and ages, and transfers of allegiance.
"We've got pressure to deliver as quickly as possible," said Howman, who claimed track and field was in a better position than cycling at its nadir. "We feel that responsibility and it is up to us -- whether we are successful depends on how well we do the work. We know the pressure is on us and we want to deliver.
"People are anxious to get things done quickly but we will do things in a measured way. We are not going to panic. My experience shows you have to bring people with you. You have to spend the time and energy explaining."
Howman, from New Zealand, was talking after a session with some of his team on winning over the people within track and field -- and the fans of it -- at a hotel in Canary Wharf, a 3-mile jog to the London Stadium that hosts the World Championships.
Some of Howman's team will spend the next couple of weeks spreading the word at the championships on what the AIU is setting out to do. They have already started asking athletes to sign a four-part integrity pledge that is listed on a card to be worn with their credentials while around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The buy-in from athletes and those around them is critical to the AIU's approach. Howman wants them to help drive the unit's work, with the fourth pledge underlining their key role.
"We're not going to be calling them whistleblowers," he said. "That taints them. It has a connection in common speak of being a snitch and that's wrong. We want to encourage people to come forward with information that we can treat in a confidential fashion.
"I haven't thought of the word to describe them but it ought to be clean, true athletes who are confident in us to be able to speak freely and [are] confident in our ability to keep that information in a confidential way.
"I think that can be done. You have to protect the data and deal with information so that that person's identity is not disclosed in a legal hearing. Those are the challenges."
Howman, WADA head from 2003 until last year, is experienced in trying to protect informants and said there are lots of ways to do it; he doesn't claim to have the perfect approach and other organisations have struggled, but that is not his only concern.
The day-to-day head of the unit, Australian Brett Clothier, has been tasked with finding enhanced ways to protect data after the Fancy Bears hack of IAAF-held information last February; the possibility of compensating athletes who missed out on prize money because of cheats is yet to be discussed; and a strategy for a more urgent, intelligence-led response to retesting blood samples is on the agenda.
On top of all that, the AIU -- with plans to become a 15-person unit -- will find out in the next year or so if its $8 million (£6.4m) budget is sufficient and whether the public believe it is truly independent of the IAAF, which created it and funds it.
Howman expressed confidence in the independence of the AIU's structure combined with a robust personal reputation in this area. He was also optimistic that the team he has picked around him, which has initially focused on assessing Russian doping cases and issues facing IAAF Council member Frankie Fredericks, can scale the challenges to come.
But he doesn't wanted to be painted as the guy charged with saving track and field. "I don't think it's our job to restore the credibility of the sport," he said. "It's our job to show we have the most effective, responsible programme to deal with the challenges to integrity.
"If we produce a programme that everybody buys into, and we are bringing athletes and the athletes' entourages with us, then that will restore the credibility of the sport. That's our objective, but it won't happen overnight."