Structure is last of the main five Olympic venues to get started

Construction work has started more than a month early on the Olympic media centre, organisers of the Games have announced.

Workers have started sinking 2,100 concrete piles, which will form the foundations of the international broadcast centre (IBC) and main press centre (MPC). The main contractor is Carillion. The Olympic Delivery Authority said work on the IBC’s steel frame, which will be 275m long, 104m wide and 21m high, would begin in the summer.

The venue will host about 20,000 journalists during the Olympics and be turned into business space after the Games. It is the last of the main five venues to get under way – work on the stadium, aquatics centre, athletes’ village, and velodrome has already started.

Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister, said: “Construction of the Olympic site continues to make excellent progress and, with work on the media centre now under way, the park is really starting to take shape.

“The media centre will provide top quality facilities for the thousands of press who will be in London during the Olympic and Paralympic Games beaming the story of the 2012 Games across the world.”

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