Anyone who has taken one of the bus tours around the Olympic Park will know that the organisers really do love their facts and figures, from the 8.8 million tickets to the 2000 relocated newts.

But the one statistic I will remember concerns the 21 tonnes of cheese that will be consumed at the Games. It was such a brilliantly pointless fact. I will relate some more in my quick tour of what's in our latest special Olympics issue.

We look at the engineering behind one of the most famous Olympic buildings, the Pringle-shaped velodrome (56km of timber laid by 26 carpenters using 300,000 nails). The cyclists down below need thinner, warmer air to perform their best; the spectators above them need cooler, more comfortable air. So how does the design stop the hot air rising and spoiling it for everyone?

The authorities claim these will be the greenest games ever (contributing 1.9M tonnes of CO2 emissions over 7 years) and part of that is the engineering behind powering the Olympic Park.

Visitors on tours of the Park can't fail to have noticed the safety and security (including 76 miles of temporary fencing). But it goes way beyond the park itself, or indeed missile launchers on nearby tower blocks. Find out why and how the authorities rerouted existingCCTV services across London and the complex logistics it takes to keep the Olympics going (supplied by 300 trucks making 15,000 deliveries) and London moving at the same time. And with the queues growing at Heathrow airport (handling 600,000 pieces of luggage during the Games) we look at whether technology can help to avert an embarrassing fiasco.

We find out how the broadcasters will deliver the Games to the four billion viewers around the world and we investigate how social media (800,000 followers already) will introduce a whole new way for spectators, sponsors and athletes to be involved with the Games.

The buildings are up, the stage is set and the athletes are arriving (10,490 to be precise). We look at the new sports equipment technology (around one million pieces of equipment procured) that could help them to break world records and how a new design has made Team GB's clothing faster, better and, most importantly, cooler than ever before.

If you're a Games grump then you probably haven't made it this far but if you have you will surely enjoy this month's After All column from Vitali Vitaliev, who is still bitter about the Moscow Games and tries out some of the more absurd Team GB branded goods on sale this year. And that's besides the £1bn-worth of merchandise the organisers expect to sell by the end of the year.


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Dickon Ross
Editor-in-Chief
The Institution of Engineering and Technology

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