Beijing venues hit snag but still on schedule

Construction of the venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has hit problems but organisers are confident they will still be delivered on schedule at the end of next year.

Twenty of the 31 competition venues in Beijing are under construction with work well underway on the centrepiece National Stadium and the revolutionary Aquatics Centre.

"In the past we thought we were ahead of schedule but there have been some problems so we are now making steady progress on schedule," Wang Zhiyuan, the chief economist of the Beijing 2008 construction office, told a news conference yesterday.

Construction office chief Jun Yuan denied that steel shortages - 110,000 tonnes are required for the National Stadium alone - were delaying the project and said the venues would be delivered on time.

"All the projects will be finished by the end of 2007, some of them by August or September 2007 to allow for testing," he said.

"We are facing two problems," Jun added. "We have adopted new technologies unprecedented in China and applying these technologies is causing difficulties.

"There are also some problems on the technology resource side which we are trying to tackle."

A tour of what will be the heart of the 2008 Olympic Games showed that the building of the National Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held, was making good progress.

Sixteen of the hollow steel trusses that will hold in place the "Bird's Nest" roof of the 3.03 billion yuan ($377.8 million) National Stadium are already clinging to the side of the concrete structure.

Once the remaining six trusses are in place, the complicated task of fitting the interlocking pieces together, forming a dramatic twisting superstructure atop the venue, will begin.