London 2012 Olympics

I don't believe what is said there in anycase, but according to that article, that £9.7bn budget that they're saying they beat included a £2bn contingency. The 'under budget' amount of £476m therefore indicates that they spent their a lot of their contingency.

Given that contingency funding would be used for things they can't expect (imagine that can cover all manner of mis management) doesn't that mean that it's come in over the amount that they expected to spend?

Yep - I worked on the Olympic Park for 2 years.
The highlight for me was being able to watching the pouring of the concrete for the aquatics centre flooring in Jan 2011, which was then tiled over and finished by Feb 2011. Lovely stuff. Then watching all the tiling shatter when the temperature went up in March, causing the the concrete to expand by about 7mm.

You could ask the most inexperienced apprentice why you don't pour concrete in January and they would be able to tell you. But the CLG/ODA didn't look up from the budget sheets and programme of delivery to notice that they were making ridiculous demands.

Tiling contractor was happy though - his contract amount doubled.