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Photos | 10 years on from London Olympics construction

CM Staff
London Olympic stadium under construction
London Olympic Stadium under construction, Stratford. Construction by Sir Robert McAlpine started in 2008 and concluded in 2011. Total construction cost was £486m. (Image: Dreamstime)

This year marks 10 years since the London Olympics took place, and the conclusion of a mega-project four years in the making, with construction work on the Olympic Stadium beginning in 2008.

A total of 80,000 people were involved in the construction, which transformed Stratford in east London into a 2.5 sq km Olympic Park with stadium, velodrome, Basketball Arena, Aquatics Centre, and Athletes’ Village, which was later converted into housing.

The view across the Athletes’ Village construction site in 2010. The site was home to 17,000 athletes in the 2012 Games before becoming the East Village residential development after the Olympics concluded. The Velodrome is to the right (Image: Dreamstime)

The project ended up costing £8.77bn, which more than two-thirds of the public agreed represented value for money, according to a ComRes poll in 2013. The final cost was more than three times the original budget of £2.4bn.

Among the contractors involved in the construction were:

  • Aquatics Centre: Balfour Beatty
  • Athletes’ Village: Lend Lease
  • Basketball Arena: CLM (consortium involving Laing O’Rourke, Mace, CH2M Hill)
  • Media Centre: Carillion
  • Olympic Stadium: Sir Robert McAlpine
  • Velodrome: ISG
A view across the Olympic Park to the construction of the Basketball Arena and the Olympic Village. Completed in 2011, the project cost £40m to build. (Image: Dreamstime)
Construction of the Aquatics Centre. With two 50m swimming pools and a 25m diving pool the construction budget swelled to triple its original £75m target, with the Zaha Hadid-designed wave-shaped roof said to have cost around £60m alone.
The Olympic velodrome cost £105m to build and was completed three months ahead of schedule, opening in February 2011. (Image: Dreamstime)
A 2012 Olympics sign partially dismantled in London’s Trafalgar Square (Image: Dreamstime)
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