Tour of the Olympic Park - January 2009

Published on Mon 9th Feb 2009

Tour of the Olympic Park - January 2009

What can the London 2012 Games do for east London that other regeneration schemes cannot? A tour of the Olympic Park with David Higgins last week showed me what the Games can deliver.

David runs the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and he has an enormous task - to ensure that the construction of the Olympic Park is delivered on time and on budget, to enable the London 2012 Games to take place.

East London was home to some of London's most deprived boroughs 100 years ago, and there has been little improvement over the years. But all that changed when London won the bid to host the Games. In the last 18 months, £3 billion has been spent installing new electricity and sewerage, improving transport, and cleaning up rivers and canals.

Couldn't this have been achieved with a series of small regeneration projects down the years? David Higgins believes that only a London 2012-sized project can provide the necessary coherence and determination. He explained to me that, without the Games, it is unlikely that this part of London could have been properly regenerated.

There needed to be massive changes to the infrastructure - tunnels drilled to put power lines underground, a whole new sewerage system, even the construction of a dedicated power station! When completed, this will power the new Stratford City shopping complex, all the new homes on the Park and many neighbouring parts of Newham.

What was needed was one person to have overall control and responsibility for delivering the whole package. And I'm confident that person is David Higgins.

On a tour of the Park, the most impressive thing for me was the sheer scale of everything including the Stratford City shopping development. Already vast skeletal blocks sit on the skyline and this will form the gateway to the Park for most visitors in 2012. The complex is bigger than the new shopping centre at White City, and will create around 17,000 jobs. The centre is due to open in early 2011 and I will definitely be going along.

The whole Olympic Park is awe-inspiring. Although it is already known officially as the Olympic Park, at the moment it is the largest construction site in Europe.

We entered through the southern entrance and immediately saw the main Olympic Stadium emerging out of the ground. The construction of this building is quite a feat - it is twice the size of the Wembley Stadium (although with a similar seating capacity) but it's only about half as tall. David told me that in just over a year's time the stadium structure would be finished and the fitting out would then begin.

He explained that the building will be functional with no wasted expense. It will use about a quarter of the steel used for the 'Bird's Nest' stadium in Beijing - most of which was for decorative purposes. The steel comes from a company in the north of England, and is welded into sections before being transported to the Park. And the steel for the Aquatics Centre will come from Wales.

Because it is such a huge construction site, you might think it is chaotic. Indeed, I have never seen so much earth and mud anywhere in my life, with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of workers. But it is incredibly orderly.

There is a 15-mile per hour speed limit throughout the site, with speed cameras and speed limits that are rigorously enforced for everyone throughout the Park. There are road signs as you would find on normal roads, directing you to the Aquatics Centre, or the Olympic Village.

Security is tight, and technology enables fingerprint and iris recognition of staff. And there is a lot, an awful lot, of fencing. Because there are so many different contractors working on the site, on different aspects of the construction, each area is fenced off and only authorised contractors are allowed to enter. So when one finishes digging a trench, for example, the area is then handed over to another contractor.

This area of London has not changed for 100 years, and there was a lot of contaminated land within the Park. So it is essential that everything is sorted, sifted and chemically treated to ensure it is safe for future use. There are two giant soil washing machines, and once they have done their job the vast majority of the soil and rubble is being reused.

We have a tendency in Britain to assume the worst. We imagine every big project will end up as a botched job. And the history of the Wembley Stadium is not an inspiring example. Can David Higgins succeed where others have failed and complete the Olympic Park on time and on budget? Having seen him on his home ground, I have every confidence that he - and the whole team - will deliver.