8.  The Games will begin on 27 July 2012, and the bulk of the budget (more than £7,000 million on current estimates) is for developing the site for the Olympic Park, some 500 acres of previously used and contaminated land in East London. The Olympic Delivery Authority has reviewed its plans for delivering the venues and infrastructure, and its November 2007 Programme Baseline Report details the scope, cost and timings of its projects.[21]

9.  Clearing the site for the Olympic Park has been a priority, and by the end of March 2008, some 80% of buildings had been demolished and two thirds of the site cleared, enabling construction to start.[22] By the same point, the Olympic Delivery Authority had completed almost a third of its main procurements, but only 23 of the 33 critical path procurements it had planned to complete. The delays are mainly attributable to the time taken to produce specifications, obtain planning permissions and negotiate contracts.[23]

10.  The contracts for two key Games venues, the Main Stadium and Aquatics Centre, have been let. The forecast construction completion dates have slipped by two and four months respectively.[24] The Delivery Authority has sought to reduce the impact by arranging for LOCOG to do work in parallel with construction, in readiness for test events. Figure 2 shows how the construction timings have changed on a number of projects since the November 2007 Baseline was established. Overall, the Delivery Authority still expects to complete its construction activities during 2011 in time to allow test events before the start of the Games.[25]

11.  Experience from previous Games suggests that after the Beijing Games the world's attention will turn to London and this may bring pressure to change venue and infrastructure specifications. The Department and the Olympic Delivery Authority acknowledged that they were likely to see demand for changes, at a time when construction work should be well underway.[26] Meanwhile the Delivery Authority is working to get its designs largely agreed before Beijing. Any subsequent proposals will be scrutinised through the Delivery Authority's arrangements for change control.[27]

Figure 2: The start and completion dates for the construction of the main venue and infrastructure projects delivered by the Olympic Delivery Authority at the end of March 2008 compared with the milestones in the November 2007 Programme Baseline Report

* The planned construction start date on the Main Stadium was July 2008. The contractors were given access to the Main Stadium site three months earlier, in April 2008, and construction work on the site began in May 2008, two months ahead of the planned construction start date.

Source: Comptroller and Auditor General's Report HC 490 Session 2007-2008

22   Qq 1, 4; C&AG's Report, paras 3.5, 3.7 Back

23   C&AG's Report, para 3.15 Back

24   Q 17; C&AG's Report, paras 4.20, 4.27; Figure 10 Back

25   C&AG's Report, paras 13, 3.7, 3.9, Figure 10 Back

26   Q 88; C&AG's Report, para 4.13 Back

27   Q 88; C&AG's Report, para 4.13 Back