Galliford Try progresses with Leicester's £60m rugby stadium

Steve Menary discovers how the £60m first phase redevelopment of Leicester Tigers' rugby ground is faring.

• View artists impressions of how the new stadium will look

Scheduling the hoist of a 106m-long and 10m-high steel truss into the roof of an existing sports stadium in January might not seem the best of decisions.

At Welford Road, the home ground of Leicester Tigers rugby union club, Galliford Try has had little choice.

The contractor is replacing the existing North Stand in the first part of a £60m redevelopment of the ground and the Tigers' want the 17,000 capacity stadium open for as long as possible.

Sean Bowles, Galliford Try's operations director on the project, admits: "Technically it's quite challenging as we're keeping the existing North Stand in use for the duration of this season apart from the last three or four fixtures and the new one has to be ready by 21 August. We've got a window working back from that date when we can start taking down the old North Stand."

That deadline has defined the timetable for the entire project, which comprises replacing the ageing North Stand with a 10,500-seat stand to be sponsored by plant giant Caterpillar.

The redevelopment will take the capacity to 24,000 and make Welford Road the biggest dedicated club rugby stadium in the country.

Ad hoc growth

Welford Road first staged rugby around the turn of the century and has been added to on an ad hoc basis.

The stadium is on a tight plot. There was space behind the North Stand for enlargement, but this meant losing the club car park.

Behind the stadium's South Stand was a section of a land that used to hold the Granby Halls Theatre, which was demolished in 2001. When this plot came on to the market the logistics became easier.

The Tigers shifted their car park to behind the South Stand, leased land behind the North Stand from Leicester City Council for a goods depot and organised their own site clearance with Armac brought in under a separate contract.

The club also recruited architect AFL, which worked on the redevelopment of the Old Trafford and Anfield football grounds and Thomond Park, the home of Irish rugby union side Munster, for the design.

AFL sports director John Roberts explains: "We had to get the greatest number of supporters as close to the playing surface as we could because that is what the directors want and that is one of the things that makes Welford Road such a special sporting venue. That was also true of the designs for Munster.

"And you have to have a very clear plan of development so that, even in a phased redevelopment, the finished stadium still looks like one single idea. Old Trafford had six or seven build contracts to achieve but it certainly looks like a single idea now."

AFL and project manager Frank Whittle were novated to Galliford Try, which won the design and build contract in August this year and started straight away.

An immediate challenge was a 1,600mm drop in the ground from one end of the existing stand to another. Galliford Try project manager Steve Astbury explains: "We took 1m out at one end and put in 600mm at the other with a piling blanket on the top."

In total, 320 concrete flight augur piles of 450mm in diameter were sunk to a depth of 9.6m over eight days. By the end of October, pile caps, ground beams and drainage had been installed and the first pieces of structure - concrete stairwells - went up in early November.

These will provide partial support for the king truss, which was specified by AFL instead of a cantilever stand.

Steelwork fabrication

Steelwork contractor Caunton Engineering fabricated the truss in 12 sections and sent a team of 16 people to the site to assemble it before the hoist takes place at the end of January.

Two 1,000 tonne capacity cranes will lift the truss from either end with a third smaller crane used to support tying in the section to cellular beams. The only problem is be the bracing January wind. If the wind is too strong, the lift will have to be cancelled on safety grounds and the project team will be keeping a keen eye on the weather forecast in the New Year.

"I guess we'll find out then whether God is a Leicester Tigers or a Harlequins fan," jokes Caunton's divisional director Geoffrey Taylor.

To ensure continuity, Galliford Try is using Caunton to fabricate and assemble the king truss and put in place the precast concrete sections.

Astbury adds: "We've got no pitch-side access. There's no point having two sets of cranes and workers on site as one set would be standing around while the others worked and vice versa so we've got one single erection team and Caunton are getting in the cranes."

AFL's design includes a 1.5 degree tilt towards the pitch to keep out the elements and create a bowl effect as part of the final redevelopment to eventually take the capacity up to 30,000.

Galliford Try is only building up to the rear of the existing North Stand. Towards the end of this rugby season, the old stand will be pulled down and Galliford Try will complete the section, adding an aluminium standing seam roof produced by Kalzip.

The roof comes in 30m long strips, which are only 400mm wide. Around 800 sheets will be needed and rolled on site to clad the roof in the sections either side of the truss and to the rear.

That will be the culmination of the first phase. Galliford Try is not guaranteed the rest of the work but does have a track record with the Tigers. When it beat the likes of Hall Construction to the £14.5m job for the North Stand, that success secured a return to Welford Road following a 13-year absence.

For the 1995/96 season, Galliford - before its merger with Try - built the £2m Alliance & Leicester Stand providing 2,800 seats plus 26 air-conditioned executive boxes and a 120-seat restaurant.

That job was another tricky project. It had to install piled foundations and a 290-tonne frame at the climax of the Tigers' 1994/95 playing campaign.

The Tigers are likely to redevelop the South or the West stands next but if Galliford Try impresses sufficiently this time, the firm could get a chance to undo all the work done in 1995 by taking down the A&L stand.