Sebastian Coe, the chairman of London 2012, and David Higgins, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), today visited the Olympic Park to mark the achievement and meet staff working on the project.

 

Coe said: “The progress being made on the Olympic Park site is simply extraordinary - the scale and complexity of this task cannot be underestimated. 

 

“It is thanks to the dedication and professionalism of all the staff working on the project, that not only are we on schedule but the work is being carried out with the very highest standards of health and safety. 

 

“To achieve more than one million hours without a reportable accident is testament to the fantastic work being carried out on site.”    

 

Higgins said: “It is thanks to the hard work and dedication of the staff that I met today that we are exactly where we planned to be at this stage of the programme.

 

“A huge amount has been achieved on this complex site over the last year with an extensive demolition and earthworks programme.

 

"This has been done with the health and safety at the fore front of our plans and over a million hours has been achieved without a reportable incident.

 

"Safety has to come first in a project of this size, scale and complexity.”

 

Union leaders in Britain are currently lobbying the ODA to commit to the use of directly employed labour with proper employment contracts.

 

They warn that if they do not the ODA risks disaster.

 

They claim direct employment would lead to better use of local labour, apprentices and improve health and safety on site, he insisted.

 

Union officials point to the successful Sydney 2000 Olympics, where direct employment was used and just one worker was killed.

This compared to the 2004 Athens Olympics construction, which relied heavily on foreign labour, resulting in at least 13 deaths.

But it has been claimed there were probably more as only the deaths of registered nationals were recorded.

A report in The Sunday Times last month there had been 10 deaths during the building project in Beijing.

Chinese officials at first denied the claim before admitting that at least six workers had been killed.