Construction forward or back in 80 years?

With the FA finally being handed the keys to the new Wembley Stadium this week, it led me to wonder, has construction in this country gone forwards or back in the 80 years since the original stadium was built.

The original stadium began construction in 1922 and opened on 23rd April 1923, taking only 300 days to build. The new stadium has taken 5 years to build, 7 if you include the delay to actually starting the construction.

In terms of cost, the original stadium cost £750’000 compared to £757 million pounds for the new one. Using Measuring Wealth to calculate the £750’000 in today’s money you get this:
£28,495,652.17 using the retail price index
£32,908,995.82 using the GDP deflator
£128,967,442.87 using average earnings
£159,930,757.94 using per capita GDP
£215,927,827.71 using the GDP

So in just over 80 years it now takes 5 times longer to build a stadium, and even using the most expensive measure GDP, the stadium cost £541 million pounds more than the original. In terms of time and cost then the construction industry certainly has gone backwards. Doesn’t bode well for the Olympics.