The sheer scale of the 2012 project makes it a statistician’s dream. Here are a few figures, from the biggest buildings to the barest bones …

Four skeletons removed from a prehistoric settlement discovered on the site of the aquatics centre

The Olympic park

  • 8.35km of waterways in and around the park
  • One of the largest urban parks to be built in Europe for 150 years
  • 100ha of new parklands
  • 10 rail lines
  • Five permanent venues
  • 30 new bridges
  • 80,000 seats in the Olympic stadium
  • 11 residential blocks in the Olympic village
  • Five jumbo jets could fit in the international broadcast centre
  • The 900,000ft2 of media facilities will cater for 20,000 broadcasters and journalists
  • 30,000 people will have worked on the project by 2012
  • Three new, fully-operational logistics centres

10,000 pages of outline planning applications

2.5km2 in size - the same as Hyde Park

The UK’s biggest building site

  • 14 bus stops
  • 21 buses used to transport workers around site
  • 5km of temporary roads, 46km of temporary cabling and 1km of temporary water pipes
  • On-site bus service set up for workers, fuel storage and service station for site vehicles, waste consolidation centre, mail service, health facility and a radio network
  • 875 average daily delivery bookings to Olympic park, village and Stratford City sites at peak last month

11 canteens each serving between 80 and 350 people a day

Big spenders

Some of the major costs include:

  • The stadium £533m
  • The village £687m
  • The aquatics centre £250m
  • Transport £858m
  • The media centre £337m
  • Infrastructure £1.9bn
  • Anticipated final cost £7.3bn

The green games

  • 97% of construction waste being diverted from landfill to be reused or recycled instead
  • 60% of materials by weight delivered to Olympic park site by rail or water transport - beating target of 50%
  • More than 4,000 trees, 74,000 plants, 60,000 bulbs and 240,000 wetland plants - the largest such project ever undertaken in the UK
  • 45ha of wildlife habitats - including reedbeds, grasslands, ponds and woodlands with 525 bird boxes and 150 bat boxes
  • Venues will use at least 40% less water than equivalent buildings
  • 4,000 newts relocated off the park
  • 100% of spectators will arrive by public transport, walking or cycling

The workers

  • Predicted peak workforce of 8,000 on Olympic park in October 2010
  • 30,000 people will have worked on the project by 2012
  • More than 10,000 businesses engaged
  • More than 1,300 direct contracts awarded by Olympic Delivery Authority and an estimated 75,000 companies winning contracts

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