Liverpool FC Anfield Road Stand Expansion
The Project
In July 2021, we attended a site meeting at Anfield. We discussed installing a temporary access road across the football pitch. This was to allow access for mobile and crawler cranes to remove the old roof section for the Liverpool FC Anfield Road Stand Expansion.
The works to build the new stand were already underway outside of the stadium. They needed access to remove the roof sections from the inside of the stadium. In January 2022 we prepared a mock site installation at the Liverpool FC training ground. This was so the head groundsman could conduct tests before entering the main stadium. We successfully installed a temporary access road for a full week, applying estimated loads also allowing groundsmen to trial it.
The Winter World Cup in Qatar in November/December 2022 was the scheduled timeframe for the project. Numerous meetings took place during the run-up to this. Geared up to commence the project in November, we faced lifting issues and tight timeframes. This resulted in a delay until May 2023, following the conclusion of Liverpool’s final game of the football season.
On the 21st of May 2023, almost 2 years from the initial enquiry, we arrived on site outside the stadium. We arrived in the afternoon to ensure that all our crews could undergo induction. We were ready to start the installation the next morning.
Our Trackway & Service Solution
The site received a team of 14 men, 4 installation vehicles, 2 forklift trucks, as well as 15 loads of aluminium temporary roadway panels. Beginning the project on Monday 22nd May, we worked in 2 teams, over 24 hours, to complete the work by midday on Wednesday 24th May. We installed 1,375 panels in a 2.5-day period.
We created a 6m x 5m ramp through the Kop end tunnel entrance to facilitate access to the pitch level. Then we installed a double-element temporary roadway system from the Kop end and over to the Anfield Road end. A layer of membrane underlay was installed directly onto the pitch surface. We positioned the bottom layer of our panels flat-side down to prevent any corrugation markings from penetrating the pitch surface.
The top layer of panels was turned in the opposite direction to form a cross-bonded temporary platform. This takes out the flex within the panels and creates a solid platform to help distribute the anticipated loads. We covered a total area of 5000 sq/m, creating a large space for the project. The temporary access road accommodated 2 x 300-ton mobile cranes and 2 x 600-ton crawler cranes.
The crawler cranes were built on-site and positioned on specially designed platforms atop our panels, aiding in weight distribution during the removal of the old roof section, which weighed 282 tonnes. The temporary access road stayed in place for 5 weeks and was subsequently. Removal was at the end of June 2023 upon the completion of the Liverpool FC Anfield Road stand expansion.
You and your teams have carried out an amazing piece of work and should be incredibly proud of what you achieved.
It has been an absolute pleasure working with your teams on site, and to see truly professional people working under extreme pressure has restored my faith in the construction industry.
Please pass on my genuine thanks to all your team members. Thank you.