Two UK companies have signed the contracts to build two of London 2012 as flagship venues, the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatics Centre.
Balfour Beatty has won the contract to build the Aquatics Centre and Team Stadium (Sir Robert McAlpine, HOK Sport and Buro Happold) were confirmed as the contractor for the Olympic Stadium.
The 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium will host the Athletics events as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Games. After the Games the Stadium will be converted to a 25,000 seat Athletics stadium, suitable for other sporting, community and educational uses.
The Aquatics Centre will have a capacity of 17,500 during the Games, reducing to 2,500 after the Games, with the ability to increase this for major events. The Aquatics Centre will include two 50m Swimming pools and a Diving pool - facilities that London does not have at present.
The contract for the Aquatics Centre also includes constructing the huge land bridge that will be the main gateway into the Olympic Park. The budgets for the Centre and the land bridge are £242m and £61m respectively.
And what a budget! The ODA’s press release proudly announces that the contracts are “within its baseline budget of £6.09 billion” with “no call on programme contingency at this stage”. Of the £6 billion, the stadium is going to cost £496 million and the pool a further £242 million
Leave a reply