A game of two halves at Cardiff

They were losing the game badly, but after a team talk Laing managed to turn its Millennium Stadium project around.

The half-time score on the £126 million Cardiff Arms Park was £20 million over budget, but now, following a tough review, the stadium looks like it will be ready on time for the ultimate deadline - the start of the Rugby World Cup finals in October.

Now shaping up, in the words of Tony Aikenhead, Laing's operations manager, is "the finest stadium in the world," and it should clearly bring joy at a resurgent time in the history of Welsh international rugby.

After all, Laing has delivered on its disaster recovery plan, which is worthy of celebration. Less clear, however, is the detail of how and why the venture got into trouble in the first place.

Like an unbreakable line of sturdy forwards, no one at Laing was going to allow anyone through their defence to score points off them at a press briefing in Cardiff, last Thursday.

Any allusion to the inadequate decision making, poor planning and construction delays were countered by the argument that Laing had already set aside a pool of money in case there were additional costs and would foot the whole bill itself. That was then, this is now, was the message.

More relevant, as Laing saw it, was that this stadium is being completed as the Welsh team is still celebrating its first-ever victory over the world champions South Africa last month - a sixth win in succession promising to usher in the biggest golden age for Welsh rugby since the 1970s.

Ever since the final match was played in the famous old arena, the Swalec Cup Final on April 26, 1997, doubters claimed the project would never be ready in time for the World Cup finals. Well now they had been proved wrong.

Laing has had three different project directors - the latest, Trevor Hodges, to cover for Martin Foster in February who returned to civil engineering operations in the south-east of England.

A Laing spokesman says: "When the building, civil engineering and management contracting divisions combined, it meant that any member of staff within Laing could be appointed to work on any particular job. The final months of the project demanded someone with more experience in finishing buildings. Hodges had experience in overseeing complex projects in London and was considered the right man for the job."

In spite of these problems, the Millennium Commission has maintained from the outset that Laing was its first choice from the 14 tenders submitted. Chairman Glanmor Griffiths, who is also chairman and treasurer of the Welsh Rugby Union, said: "Laing bought a reputation with them for this job. We knew that when we awarded them the contract they had just completed the second Severn Crossing on time and that was a major factor that influenced the Welsh Rugby Union.

"There is absolutely no doubt that they will be one of the forerunners of stadium bids well into the future. Whether they will want them or not is a matter for them."

Laing would not be drawn into that argument. Aikenhead responded cagily: "It is great for Laing to be involved in such prestigious and complex projects. But at the end of the day we are a business and if the spin-offs involve the design and construction of very large, complex stadia then so be it, but the project has to be treated as a business and not for the want of doing it for the prestigious element."

However, he did not rule out a bid to carry out construction work on the new Wembley Stadium. "We are making typical business enquiries. It's a question of what the client's needs are in terms of the redevelopment of the area, particularly in terms of transport policy. But that is only a tiny part of the restructuring of the site."

Now the first game at the Millennium Stadium has been and gone without a hitch, all thoughts can turn to the Rugby World Cup itself and Wales' first match against Argentina. But five years ago, the WRU was not even sure that rebuilding on the site of Cardiff Arms Park was the best option.

Griffiths explained: "Various feasibility studies were carried out to look at rebuilding the stadium on the old site or on a greenfield site. Had we gone for the greenfield site planning permission would have dictated that we would have needed parking spaces for 10,000 cars and 3,000 coaches and that in itself was 100 acres of hard standing.

"Here (on the old Cardiff Arms Park site) we are hemmed-in - in all corners, all sides, we have properties all round and we are by the river which means it was extremely difficult to rebuild. But at the end of the day the advantages of being right in the city centre, which is unique for an international stadium, were too strong. We also have the close proximity of bars, restaurants and shops and rail and road communication."

Other work to enable the new stadium to be built involved BT knocking down and relocating a telephone exchange of 700,000 telephone lines, constructing a new home for the Benefits Agency and the TA Centre for Wales which cost £6 million, demolishing the Empire Pool and building a riverwalk at the cost of a further £12 million.

Griffiths added: "When we started on the project everyone knew that we were undertaking one of the most difficult construction jobs ever undertaken in Europe. I don't think there has ever been a project of this magnitude that has been built to such a tight schedule. It should have taken four years, we are doing it in half the time."

With the South African game out of the way the next focus for the site team is completion of the major elements by mid August.

Attention will focus on the roof: cladding panels are being fitted now and, like the retractable part of the structure, work is due to be completed by the middle of the month. Over the next three weeks support cables will be threaded through the masts that ascend above the stadium, allowing the intrusive temporary steel structures below to be removed.

Another 20,000 seats have still to be installed in the south part of the stadium, and general fit out of the corporate hospitality boxes is yet to be finished.

In theory, all should be complete by the next match against France on 21 August. Another game follows soon after - against Canada on 28 August, so the pressure would seem to be on.

But the good news for Laing is that neither game will attract a capacity crowd, allowing scope for some elements to run later than its mid August target without creating front page news. Snagging could continue into September, but everyone is clear - and confident - that the stadium will be 100 per cent complete by 1 October for the start of the World Cup against Argentina.