One month and counting …

With the London Games just a few weeks away, Britain is gearing itself up for a month at the centre of the world stage; firstly as hosts of the Games, closely followed by the Paralympics.

Back in 2005, when Seb Coe and his team pitched their winning bid in Singapore, a cornerstone of their proposition was the regeneration afforded to Stratford in Newham, East London, one of the capital’s most diverse and economically deprived areas. With a £4bn mixed use regeneration scheme (which included the Westfield centre) already planned, the area afforded a sizeable brownfield site which could be redeveloped to house the Park.

So, seven years on and what has London 2012 Games brought to the UK?

In February of this year it was reported in parliament that at its peak (March 2011) work on the park and village employed 12,000 workers, including 450 apprentices across 27 trades. One legacy to the construction industry has been the opening of a National Skills Academy for construction, which has provided 3,500 training places for local people and Londoners to help deliver the venues and infrastructure.

Overall, capital spend generated by the Olympics has totalled just short of £10bn, of which the bulk - £7.2bn has been spent on developing and strengthening the transport infrastructure. The sports venues and Olympic village have generated a further £1.2bn of spend, whilst the Olympic Park infrastructure has come in at a cost of £1.3bn. The remainder has been spent on projects such as the International Media Centre.

And, as we all know, the project has come in on time and on budget – a real credit to everybody involved and something our industry should rightly be proud of for many years to come.

Over the next few weeks, attention will shift away to other sectors such as tourism and retail, both of which look set to benefit. In their May report, as well as looking at the economic consequences of the Jubilee, the Bank of England also attempted to quantify the Olympic effect. Their conclusion was that based on the 2000 Sydney games, we could expect the Games to give the UK economy a boost of 0.2% in GDP.

So, let’s fly the flag and look forward to a summer of sport like no other.