With 16 weeks to its new year's eve opening, organisers are confident that the £750m centrepiece of Britain's millennium celebrations will be completed in good time.
Work on the HP:ICM/Branson Coates-designed Body Zone is ahead of schedule and will be completed at the end of October when its steel frame is enveloped in tailor-made fibreglass tiles.
A spokesman for New Millennium Experience Company said most of the construction work on the other zones would be completed this month, allowing installation of their contents to begin straight away.
The spokesman said: “We’re roughly two-thirds of the way through constructing the zones, and installation of the zone contents will start at the end of September. Most of the work for the zones’ contents is being manufactured off site but will be completed on site by late November and early December.”
Despite the last-minute December finish, he denied there would be a rush to complete the zone interiors before the all-important deadline.
“We will have at least two weeks clear at the end of the schedule to do last-minute refinements. It’s going to happen. We’re on time for virtually all the zones and some, like the Body Zone and the Home Planet Zone, are slightly ahead of schedule,” he said.
He added that dome tickets would be available from 22 September.
