VANCOUVER - Politics, economics and now construction concerns are eroding public confidence in the billion dollar Olympic athletes village but residents must not give up on the idea it will be a positive legacy, said the design manager for the site.

But that too is partially at risk if the city of Vancouver shelves 252 units of post-Games social housing in the village, said Roger Bayley, senior principal of Merrick Architecture.

"I think we all began this project with a commitment to build a sustainable community and that requires a social component, an environmental component and an economic component,'' he said.

"It would be most unfortunate if we couldn't carry through with that aspiration and come to understand how to build integrated and socially equitable communities.''

Cost overruns have pushed the bill for the social housing component of the village from $65 million to $110 million. While the city recently approved spending the money, there's still the possibility it will sell the units instead because of the high cost of maintenance.

Millennium Development Corp. paid the city $192 million and there was an Olympic contribution of $30 million, which Bayley said should be enough of a financial safety net for the city.

"Those windfalls are really what should allow them to feel OK about what it took to actually create this socially-mixed and diverse environment,'' he said.

Part of the high cost is linked to the fact the entire project is seeking LEED gold status, the highest mark of environmentally sustainable construction.

Certification requires rigorous construction specifications which the developer is carrying out under the watch of full-time inspectors, Bayley said.

That's how areas of concern around pipe insulation were caught in April and reported to the general contractors in a review published a day after union officials raised the same concerns in May, he said.

Executives with Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 118 took photographs over a six-week period that suggest pipes were being walled in without the necessary insulation to prevent mould or energy leaks.

"We can tell you that the common areas, we can tell you that the residential suites, we can tell you that the underground parking, some of the mechanical rooms, certainly don't meet the specifications and standards the work was tendered at,'' said Lee Loftus, the union local's business manager.

"The mechanical insulation is either missing or it's done at a substandard level.''

He said the only way to ensure no corners were cut on finished sections of the building is to do a full review of construction.

Bayley said what the union saw was a combination of works-in-progress and likely some human error.

With the volume of pipes, cables and the like required for each suite and the extremely tight deadline for the project, the co-ordination between trades people sometimes falters, Bayley acknowledged.

But, he said "it's very very unlikely that boarding would be put onto a suite where those elements had not been properly reviewed and signed off.''

Bayley said the inspectors and engineers stand by their work but a further review has been initiated for a simple reason.

"All of us agree that for public confidence we need to do an evaluation for those field reviews and the work in the field which means going back in and taking a look at a series of particular focus points and making certain there is no validity to the notion that what we have here is a mouldy mess,'' he said.

A city spokeswoman said officials support Millennium's plans for review and are confident in that process.

The latest public sparring over the village is the newest in a long-line of controversies that stretch back all the way to when Millennium won the bid to develop the site.

The financing for the village nearly fell apart entirely late last year when the original bankers refused to keep paying out on their loan.

The city then secretly took over payments before publicly taking over as the primary banker in December.

The Olympic organizing committee has publicly distanced itself from all of the issues surrounding the village, but says it remains confident the 1,100 units of athletes housing will be delivered to them on time.