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- Customer
- Olympic Delivery Authority
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- Completion Date
- January 2011
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- Quantity Surveyor
- CLM
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- Form Of Contract
- NEC 3
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- Project Manager
- CLM
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- Structural Engineer
- Expedition Engineering
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- Area
- 170,000 sq ft
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- Program Duration
- 98 weeks
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- Architect
- Hopkins Architects
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- ME Engineer
- BDSP
Introduction
Created for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic games, the 6,000-seater Velodrome was the first venue to be completed at the Olympic Park.
The Velodrome includes a cafe, bike hire and cycle workshop facilities and the 360-degree concourse level offer fantastic views over the Olympic Park, and out to the London skyline.
The indoor track is now primarily used for cycling events and by elite athletes and the local Stratford community.
What we did
It was the first venue to be completed on the Olympic Park world-class design and innovative construction techniques have left a lasting legacy. The Velodrome is designed around the seating and the sightlines, and its distinctive roof shape reflects the geometry of the cycling track.
ISG commenced construction work in March 2009 and completed in January 2011, ahead of schedule. We excavated 48,000m3 of material to create the bowl, which is enough to fill 19 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
More than 2,500 sections of steelwork were installed to complete the steel structure of the Velodrome which rises in height by 12m from its shallowest point to its highest. The structure had to be built in a temporary position and was only pulled back into its final position when it was loaded with the installation of the cable net, roof and façade cladding and pre-cast terracing.
A sustainably sourced Siberian pine was used for the track and this was specially selected because the trees are known for being straight and tall making them suitable for the lengths of timber required to shape the track.
Making a difference
ISG was able to influence sustainability on the Velodrome from an early stage. The outcome is the greenest venue on the Olympic Park and one of the most sustainable projects in the UK.
The Velodrome is the most energy efficient building on the Olympic Park with highly insulated walls and roof, and an energy efficient concrete structure. Around 1000 tonnes of structural steelwork was saved by our redesign of the roof in conjunction with Hopkins, the architects, and Expedition, the engineers. The venue’s distinctive and compact form creates a ‘bubble’ above the track, which helps maintain the cyclists’ ideal race environment at 26 degrees centigrade, minimising the energy consumed to heat the main arena.
The building uses 35% less energy than the Part L requirement and saves 75% of water used in a typical build. This is partly due to rainwater, harvested from the roof, which is used to flush the toilets and urinals and for landscape irrigation.
Unusually, for a building of its size, the Velodrome is naturally ventilated.
