Sport
The rugby stadium’s
new south stand nears
completion
28 NSC
27
September 18
The south stand will complete this month
(September), just in time to host the last few
rugby league fixtures of the current season.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the pitch,
the north/south stand is still ongoing and is
due to be complete in May next year.
The new north/south stand provides
seated terraces for both rugby and cricket
spectators in a back-to-back configuration
with various levels of accommodation and
circulation areas.
The stand will accommodate a total of
8,048 spectators. This will comprise 4,223 all
seated cricket capacity and 3,825 all seated
rugby capacity.
The stand will provide high quality
new facilities for both grounds and
has been designed to complement the
two sporting arenas with varying and
distinctive roofscapes to the north and south
respectively.
“The stand’s appearance from the cricket
side is a bit more related to the cricket
vernacular, with quite a nice barrel-vaulted
fabric roof on quite nimble galvanized
trusses which span about 26m over four tiers
of seating,” explains TRP Engineer Geoff
Wilks.
“The roof overlooking the rugby side is
a bit more traditional. It is a tied roof with
traditional rafters. The interesting elements
are the interaction of the crowd loading on
this frame which is loaded on both sides,
which is not what you normally see on a
sports stadium. That is an interesting design
and an interesting approach.”
On the rugby side, a temporary seating
grandstand has been put in to replace
the stand during construction. This has
presented the project team with some safety
challenges concerning safe access and safe
egress, having the crowd support systems in
place during match days and then actually
constructing a stand behind and over it.
Once the rugby season is over, the
temporary seating will be dismantled, leaving
a space for the new stand’s lower tier steel
rakers and precast terracing to be installed.
Mr Wilks says that ordinarily the terracing
units would be installed along with the roof
and main steelwork but, in this particular
case, there has been a need to think about
the stand in a partially complete state.
“With construction work more advanced
on one side than it is on the other, it’s been
necessary to introduce temporary bracing
into the frame to give it some temporary
stability during construction.
“The challenges are unique both from an
operational point of view as far as the club
is concerned, from a construction point of
view as far as the contractor is concerned
and from a design point of view from our
side. It’s an interesting and complex scheme,
and the stand is probably the only one in the
world with back-to-back tiers.”
Visualisation of the
completed redevelopment
of the rugby venue
How the rugby
stadium’s south stand
will look
/Metallic_coatings#Hot-dip_galvanizing
/Trusses
/Leisure_buildings#Stadia
/Design
/Construction
/Leisure_buildings#Sightlines_and_seating
/Construction#Temporary_works