Olympic media centre £90m over budget

The original £400m design, intended to accommodate 20,000 journalists, will be now be revised to include more temporary structures, reported Building magazine. A source close to the project told Building that Carillion, regeneration developer Igloo and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) were carrying out 'intensive technical work to value-engineer the cost of the building.'

This latest overrun comes after overspends at the Olympic stadium and the aquatics centre, the latter now coming in at £303m, up from a forecast £77m.

Sources also said the public will likely have to contribute around £400m of the Olympic village's £1Bn budget, even though the number of homes has already been cut from 4,200 to about 3,000. It's thought that Lend Lease, originally employed as developer but which struggled to drum up funding, will be engaged as project manager under an interim funding agreement.

Construction News reports that upgrade work on Baker Street tube station, a key hub for ferrying passengers to and from the games, has been scaled back to get the work completed in time.

Taylor Woodrow will complete the £75m contract for the station, all of which was intended to have step-free access. But now easier access will only be created on platforms 1 to 6 for the Metropolitan, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines.

Contract Journal reports that several London 2012 officials are now in Beijing hoping to pick up some pointers on building venues. ODA construction boss Howard Shiplee and infrastructure and utilities boss Simon Wright are there with a team of officials who will visit venues and meet up with their counterparts in the Beijing Organising Committee to glean organisational and logisitic information relevant to 2012.