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ODA chairman John Armitt, a member of ACE’s Advisory Board, hit the news this summer as he announced the Olympics were £850 million pounds below budget. Following a tour of the park, Impact takes a look at some of the great engineering feats that the world will visit in 2012
Olympic Stadium
The Olympic Stadium was built with just 10,000 tonnes of steel, significantly less than previous modern Olympic stadia. It also used 6,500 cubic metres of crushed concrete recycled from works across the Olympic Park.
The stadium itself required the demolition of 30 buildings before construction could take place.
Queen Elizabeth Park
The Olympic Park is being turned from an industrial brownfield site into 2.5 square kilometres of Royal Park as part of the legacy of the Games. Around 2,000 semi-mature and mostly native trees will fill the park, providing habitats for local wildlife. More than 300,000 wetland plants will also be planted in the Park.
To make this possible 130 kilometres of overhead power cables on the site had to be moved to a pair of six-kilometre tunnels that were built below the site before other work could start.
Aquatic Centre
The sweeping 2,800 tonne roof of the aquatics centre is made of 11,000 square metres of 100% recycled aluminium material and rests on just two concrete supports at one end and a single wall at the other end.
The highest seats in the temporary wedge shaped stands are three feet higher than the highest seats in the Olympic stadium and the pools have moveable floors and booms to accommodate flexible use when opened to the public after the games.
Velodrome and BMX track
The velodrome includes a 360 degree glass wall that offers the public a chance to see the sporting action taking place from outside the venue.
The site is built on a 100-year-old landfill site and there are 900 piles that make up the building’s foundations, each 26 metres deep.
While the pristine Velodrome track is made of 56 kilometers of Siberian Pine and 350,000 nails, the adjoining BMX track is 470 meters long and was formed using 14,000 cubic meters of soil.
ArcelorMittal Orbit
Though not a venue itself, the £19.1 million ArcelorMittal Orbit is a remarkable part of the Olympic Park, rising 115 metres high to give the public a remarkable view of the park and London beyond.
Soon to be the tallest sculpture in Britain, the Orbit is built buy assembling approximately 1,400 tons of steel.
Olympic Park Energy Centre
The Energy Centre on the Olympic Park incorporates biomass boilers, and a combined cooling heat and power plant to capture the heat generated by electricity production. It is expected the centre will reduce carbon emissions by more than 1,000 tonnes per year.
The building itself has 200 foundation piles 24 metres deep, a frame made from 500 tonnes of steel, and floors and a roof made up of 3,500 square metres of concrete planks.
The White Water Centre
The £31 million canoe slalom venue between Waltham Cross and Waltham Abbey has a 5.5 metre drop over just 300 metres. A 10,000 square metre groundwater lake supplies the pumps that force 530 cubic feet of water into the course per second.
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