Well, we did what it says on the tin. We delivered. But job over? No, not exactly.

This week the Olympic Delivery Authority will be handing over control of the Olympic Park to the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) to finish the task, getting it ready for athletes, officials, media, and, of course, spectators to arrive, and for the Olympic Games to begin in 200 days time. That's a huge job in itself.

Some of the big numbers still seem mind-boggling: £6.4 billion ($9.9 billion/€7.7 billion) of contracts, 1,500 of them just with us, many thousands more throughout the supply chain; more than £900 million ($1.4 billion/€1.1 billion) saved from our budget; eight kilometres of waterways, nearly two millions tonnes of contaminated soil cleaned, 700 rooms in the Olympic Stadium, 850,000 ceramic tiles in the Aquatics Centre, 350,000 wetland plants, 4,000 trees - I could go on.

Remarkably, the venues and facilities have been built with not one work-related death from 75 million working hours, an accident record comparable to British industry as a whole, not just construction.

So what conclusions do I draw?

First, that immovable deadline we always talked about was a big positive, not a millstone around our necks - everyone knew what they had to do, and when. It concentrated minds wonderfully.

Second, London 2012 has been marked every step of the way not with great expectations, but with confounded expectations: we weren't supposed to win the Games, we weren't supposed to build the venues on time, or within budget. But we did.

We British do like a grumble and sometimes with reason. But this is actually a Team GB success story worthy of a gold medal.

So third, reports of the decline of British engineering, skill and innovation were wide of the mark. This has been a triumph for Great Britain - for companies big and small, workers and management, and public and private sectors working in partnership.

It has shown that we can do big projects. Anyone who doubts that should look at the pictures of what is now the Park, back in 2004 and 2005. The transformation is amazing. Who seriously thinks this would have been achieved so quickly and smoothly without the Olympic impetus?


We were determined we would not be gasping for breath as we crossed the finish line, but completing our event in good shape after a well-paced run. And when it came to building the venues and infrastructure I think we got our race plan just about right.

The gloom-mongers will have to put with more disappointments, I am sure: the Olympic Park Legacy Company will ensure there are no White Elephants; transporting the spectators and keeping London moving will be tough but Transport for London will do it; and LOCOG will stage terrific Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But the Olympic Delivery Authority is not finished quite yet.

Tuesday is moving out day for us - but this is "completion" day with a difference. There won't be any removal vans turning up and Seb Coe and Paul Deighton waiting anxiously to get hold of the keys.

Their teams have been on the inside for months. This will be a seamless transition, so you probably wouldn't even realise there were new people in charge. Take security, for instance. The people at the ODA responsible for keeping the site safe have a different employer from Tuesday morning, and G4S and their security guards will report now to the organisers.

But we will be around for a good while to come, answering now to LOCOG ourselves. There is building work to be completed – applying the finishing touches to the water polo venue, multi-use Eton Manor, the Olympic Village (which we hand over in late January) and the Royal Artillery Barracks at Woolwich, which promises to be an eye-catching setting for the shooting and Paralympic archery competition. (That's why we are at 95 per cent complete, not 100.)


Inside the Olympic Park, we have still got gaps to fill between the venues, parklands to plant, prune and protect, tarmac to lay, spectator malls to finish.

We are working with Transport for London and partners across the country, including local councils, bus companies and park and ride operators, to get spectators to venues and keep people on the move. Parliament gave us responsibility for over-seeing that – as well as the job of licensing outdoor traders near venues so everyone can move about freely and get easily to the events they have paid to watch.

After September it is our task to convert the apartments used by the athletes so that families can move in, "retro-fitting" the flats with kitchens where there was previously additional sleeping space to accommodate all the athletes at Games-time. And all the time there are contracts to close out.

So we will be around for a while yet, but with our workforce steadily shrinking, and with the aim that the ODA's work will be done by March 2013.

The thank yous will be said properly when our task is finally done. The plaudits, like the knighthood for the ODA's chairman, John Armitt, are much appreciated. But the credit is shared with our delivery partner, CLM, which always kept construction on track, our contractors, the 46,000 workers on the Olympic Park, the local communities who were our good neighbours, the politicians for their cross-party support, and the thousands of companies and their employees all the way down the supply chain in every corner of this country who became our trusted partners in this unique project. Once-in-a-lifetime is an over-used phrase, but this really was.

And if you will permit us all this moment of pride, we did build it. And they will come. And these will be fields of dreams this summer.

Dennis Hone is the chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority