Job has involved turning 1848-built dockyard into 53,000-seat stadium
The first test event at Everton鈥檚 new Bramley Moore Dock ground took place on Monday night as the club gears up to start next season in its new home.
The job has involved transforming a dockyard constructed in 1848 into a football stadium with a seating capacity of 52,888.
The first challenge was constructing a stadium on top of water and to do this main contractor Laing O鈥橰ourke brought in 480,000 cu m of sand from the Irish Sea by boat and gradually infilled the dockyard with it.
In preparation, fish were rescued and re-located to nearby water while to prevent the need of thousands of trips up and down the motorway by HGVs, Laing O鈥橰ourke used boats, taking the sand from the seabed 20 miles out in the Irish Sea.
O鈥橰ourke subsidiary Expanded completed 2,776 piles, before casting the sub-structure to support the super-structure of the new stadium.
Another O鈥橰ourke subsidiary Explore Manufacturing produced the first pre-cast concrete panels with Expanded installing them on site in December 2021.
In total, Explore manufactured 564 twin walls, 651 columns and 3,844 lattice planks at its off-site facility, delivering each component to site at the moment required for installation into position. By using modern methods of construction, O鈥橰ourke said it was able to save time and provide certainty to the club.
Others working on the scheme include O鈥橰ourke鈥檚 stonemason business Vetter, which worked on the red brick facades designed to display elements of the Archibald Leitch-designed latticework at its current Goodison Park home, the firm鈥檚 plant hire business Select and M&E arm Crown House. In total, Crown House installed 260 MEP modules and 914 WCs.
O鈥橰ourke also said it managed to divert more than 99% of its construction and demolition waste from going to landfill.
In all, construction took 178 weeks before handover six days before Christmas with the fit out phase expected to be complete by the middle of the year ahead of the new season starting in August.
The stadium has been designed by US architect Dan Meis and Pattern, which was bought by BDP in 2021. Meis left the practice he founded, known as Meis Architects, last May to join Aecom.
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