Dons Stadium Makes NCE …

The New Civil Engineer publication have made the new MK Dons stadium project their cover story for December’s issue.

According to their article, the designers are accommodating design changes by making the construction beautifully simple, as Pete Winkelman confesses to being a ‘nightmare client’ on the £43m project.

Winkelman’s original vision for the stadium was that of ‘a spaceship that had crashed into the ground’, together with a huge concourse that would run the full circumference of the lower tier 8m above ground level with translucent polycarbonate cladding from top to bottom. ‘I wanted something like Barcelona’s Noucamp stadium, or the Moocamp as we might call it here’ Winkelman stated. But this would have completely blown Winkelman’s budget and a different approach was put forward by Project Manager for Buckingham contractors Kevin Underwood.

To save money it was proposed to excavate 4m into the ground and build a 4m high bund around it with cut material, then support the upper 4m of the bowl on radial ground beams cast into the bund. Which is what can now be seen as the the construction is now well under way. Another interesting fact is that the ground was sprayed with Bitumen emulsion to stabilise it before pouring the concrete.

Changes have been made by Winkelman throughout the contract to maximise the potential use of the stadium. The stadium is to stage Rugby as well as football, concerts and conferences. A hotel is now to become part of the stadium, together with a childrens party room, a swimming pool, bars cafes and shops.

‘The contract is scheduled to complete Christmas next year’ States Winkelman, who indicates that he is not putting anyone under pressure to finish by then and that there is no absolute deadline. He will be happy if the stadium is ready for football by June 2007.

Structures manager Nick Ling of SKM Anthony Hunts says ‘He (Winkelman) knows that if he’s going to make constant variations, he has to provide slack. On the one hand he’s a nightmare client, and on the other he is the best you could have’

The project is a lump sum design and according to Peter Winkelman, Nick Ling lets him mess with far more than he needs to.

Not only is the design changing to suit Winkelmans improvements, but the Cantilevered roof is being ‘future proofed’ with pre drilled connection holes to suit future connections and movement joints that can be modified to account for changes in the structures dynamics.

The roof at the moment cantilevers forward by an impressive 35m. The tips of the trusses are fabricated from plate steel and can be installed without the need for a tower crane. Again it is this sort of approach by the designers and builders alike that enable the cost of construction to be kept low and also increase productivity. The same can be said about the way the lower terraces have been constructed. Instead of using ‘staircase’ formwork to cast a full flight of steps across the stands, Buckingham builders have taken a new and seemingly obvious technique of casting a single step at a time over large lengths of each stand. This way each long length of step can be cast one after another by just a couple of groundsmen instead of having to use staircase shuttering and major craneage to place the concrete, therefore saving around £250,000 pounds of the build cost and also alleviating the problems you get with hydrostatic load when you poker vibrate concrete in an 8m high staircase.

Although it would appear that ground works have already started on the west and South sides of the stadium, the majority of the works will start in earnest in the new year, while concrete and steelwork on the north and east sides is completed. With the groundworks out of the way, steel and concrete works will then move to the opposite side of the pitch, allowing fit out contractors unhindered access to the North and East.

Source of information: New Civil Engineer (8th Dec 2005)