Stadium building: what makes a winning project?

As this issue was going to press, Everton FC was preparing to play its first ever game – a friendly against AS Roma – in its new Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in Liverpool. Delivered by Laing O’Rourke through turbulent times, this is a stadium construction project to be proud of.

Not all such projects end so happily. Stadium builds come with plenty of risks, including tight construction timelines – and associated liquid damages – scope changes and a small pool of suppliers with relevant experience. Add in the complexity of venues designed to host multiple event types and a client’s desire for ‘iconic design’, and what might seem a winning contract can turn into a big loss maker.

“There are a limited number of contractors willing to take on the construction of a stadium in any form in the UK,” warns Rob Sayce, venues lead, UK and Europe, at Mott MacDonald. “Stadium construction has caused a number of construction companies to fail in the modern era.”

At the turn of the century, commercial disaster at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium was the downfall of Laing, which went on to be bought by Ray O’Rourke for a token £1 in 2001. More recently Buckingham Group went into administration in 2023, blaming major losses on its projects at Anfield. There was even a casualty on the Everton project: facade contractor Alucraft went into administration in March 2024.

Stadium projects can boost or bruise a contractor’s brand because they will always make the news.

“You know the eyes of the world are watching you,” says Sir Robert McAlpine project director Clare Gallagher, who worked as chief engineer on Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and construction manager on London’s Olympic Stadium. “Nobody is paying attention if you are building an office building, or even a new infrastructure project, but when you are building a stadium for the Olympics, everybody has questions about it.”

For companies that do have the appetite, there are major developments in the pipeline at Newcastle United, Leeds United and the mother of all stadium jobs, Manchester United’s New Trafford Stadium.

With these projects on the horizon, we asked three industry experts what it takes to get things right. Below we share the thoughts of Sayce, Gallagher and Gareth Jacques, Laing O’Rourke’s project director on Everton’s stadium.

Stadiums could be straightforward, says Sayce. “They should not be particularly complex buildings; they can be delivered in a cost effective and simple form,” he says. “But when owners and clubs are looking for unique solutions and designs for their stadium, that pushes the complexity.”

He cites the stadiums being built in Saudi Arabia for the 2034 World Cup. “They could have built 12 identical stadiums but they‘re all unique; that was inherent to the brief.”

Generally, the bigger the stadium, the bigger the design challenges – with roofs coming at the top of the list. “There is a point where a cantilevered roof becomes inefficient. Up to 40,000 you can get away with cantilevered roof trusses,” he says. “There comes a point where that’s inefficient and then you’re looking at more complex solutions such as cable-stayed roofs.”

The roof of the planned new Manchester United stadium, designed by Foster + Partners, is a case in point. “What’s fascinating is the way they have extended the roof and wrap into the precinct,” says Sayce. “That means they could engage with more fans, providing it can be done safely. That’s a bit of a nod to the US, where they attract more people to the game outside the stadium.”

With 100,000 seats, the sheer scale of the Manchester venue will make the designers have to work hard to ensure every fan has a good view. “We delivered Wembley at 90,000 and all seats were compliant within the guidelines with respect to spectator viewing,” says Sayce. “Beyond that, it can be a challenge.”

There are very particular time constraints for stadium delivery: they have to be ready for the start of the sporting season or for a particular event. That often leads to overoptimistic timelines.

However, a common theme among successfully delivered stadiums is a long lead time before work starts on site. “On both the Emirates and the Olympics, we were fortunate to have quite a long preconstruction phase and that was absolutely key to the success of the project,” says Gallagher. “We were engaged early, which meant we were able to integrate ourselves into the design teams and look at things like buildability, procurement strategies and provide planning advice.”

The same was true at Everton, says Jacques: “Sometimes we get pressured into starting too quickly by the client and that is not always the best solution. At Everton we had a good PCSA [pre construction service agreement period]. The client was very aligned with that which allowed us to iron out a lot of the details and reduce risks.”

A generous preconstruction phase also helps build strong relationships, says Gallagher. “That way you all become part of a project team rather than someone working for Sir Robert McAlpine or for a consultant or someone sitting in a client office far away making decisions.”

Both Gallagher and Jacques underline the importance of getting the right supply chain members on board early, particularly the key packages: steel, structural concrete, roof, mechanical and electrical and probably facade too.

“There is a limited pool of contractors who can work on these projects, so we want our project to be in their order book early, so that we have reserved our slots where manufacturing is involved,” says Gallagher. “There’s also the issue of financial security. In a changing market, that is very important.”

Gallagher says paid PCSAs for those key packages is the only reasonable approach. “If you want them on board early and you want their commitment, then they should be paid just as any other consultant is.” There is some risk associated with this form of early engagement, she adds, in that subcontractors could increase their prices above market rates.

On the Everton project, Jacques identified early that the critical path ran through the structural frame and the external envelope and that 80% of the construction cost was in five or six packages. So, he decided not to competitively bid them.

“We did not want to go out to a long tendering process to the supply chain, so I selected supply chain partners that we knew were skilled and had the expertise to deliver to the complexity required and meet the programme,” says Jacques. “We chose to work with Severfield (steel) and Lindner Prater (roof and envelope), who are really aligned with our way of working.”

Laing O’Rourke had the additional benefit of working with group companies Crown House Technologies for the MEP package, Expanded Piling for the piling and its Centre of Excellence for Modern Construction (CEMC) which provided precast twinwalls, columns, lattice planks and facade panels.

Manchester United has already announced that it plans to deploy offsite construction heavily for its new stadium, planning to ship prefabricated elements along the Manchester Ship Canal. Architect Lord Foster told the Manchester Evening News that this strategy will reduce the build time on site, allowing the ambitious 2030 deadline to be met.

Such a strategy requires a far higher design resource earlier in the programme, says Gallagher. “There are so many interfaces, and the design has to evolve quickly, which means you need early supply chain involvement to make sure the design is programmed correctly.”

Prefabrication elements are already used in most stadium projects, points out Sayce. However, he adds that the mode of transport dictates the size of the prefabricated units and hence how elements of the stadium are designed.

Laing O’Rourke deployed offsite extensively at Everton, working with architect BDP Pattern which helped translate the concept design by US architect Meis. As well as the precast elements from CEMC, Crown House Technologies prefabricated much of the building’s MEP elements. Laing O’Rourke also employed Banagher to supply bowl units for the terraces – simply because CEMC did not have the capacity to do that as well as its other project commitments.

An additional benefit of offsite is that it reduces the labour resource required on site, says Jacques. At Everton, there were just over 1,250 people at peak.

“If we had not gone with our MMC [modern methods of construction] solutions we would have required nearer 3,000 people,” says Jacques. “That level of resource does not exist; we would have struggled to get that number of people in Liverpool.”

One of the biggest risks to any stadium build programme is the number of changes that the client will inevitably require along the way. Owners, managers, sponsors can all change over the course of a project and accommodating the changes that new stakeholders require can be difficult.

On the Emirates stadium, the sponsors came on board part way through the programme, recalls Gallagher. “You need to have honest conversations about what is achievable during the programme, what will create risk that might manifest itself later in the programme.”

The client’s governance is important, she adds. “We were very lucky at the Emirates. There was a great [client] team that was site based with the right level of experience. The Olympic Stadium was more management by committee, and we did not have access to the decision makers. If certain decisions can only be made by a board that meets every two months… it can be a very long process.”

Adding offsite into the mix makes change even more challenging. “I am always very clear with the client in the early stages: MMC can deliver quicker programmes but if you want an aspirational programme, you also have to understand you cannot also have continuous change,” says Jacques.

The client at Everton was on board with this approach, he says, but a new owner arrived part way through the project and changes to how the hospitality would work led to between £50m and £60m of changes, with the final cost being £610m.

“In overall terms that’s just under 10% of the project cost,” says Jacques. “I’m very proud of the fact we still handed over one day early.”

Working with BIM and 3D models is business as usual on any stadium project, says Gallagher. As well as helping to iron out clashes and interface issues, they are vital for stakeholder communication, she says, recounting a story from the Emirates stadium when Arsene Wenger asked for a column to be removed from the changing rooms so that he could look every player in the eye.

At Everton, Laing O’Rourke used 4D BIM, looking at how sequencing and temporary works would look during the construction phase.

“We spent up to 16 months in preconstruction developing engineering solutions, planning the works and developing our 4D model which enabled us to build the stadium in a virtual environment before we started on site,” says Jacques. “We used this time to really focus on the logistics planning and developing what we term as engineered safety solutions.”

Laing O’Rourke also used a 3D immersive room on the Everton project, which allowed the construction team to look ahead using the 4D model and walk through sequences before they happened on site.

“Everton was the first project in the UK to use this technology when we commenced in 2021, and the fact that all the contractors input their own schedules into the model made it a truly collaborative team,” says Jacques.

When selecting the contract form for a stadium project, design and build can look like an attractive option to a client because the contractor is taking on all the risk. But that isn’t necessarily the right option, says Sayce.

“We are still in a position where advisers are advising design and build on future stadiums. This has to change. Major stadiums like Manchester United will not and cannot be delivered by design and build. There is no appetite. They will move to construction management; they will have to.

“Construction management can be more daunting because of the lack of cost certainty but it leaves the clients with more opportunities to make decisions, influence design and ultimately end up with a better stadium.”

Mace, which declined to be interviewed for this article, used construction management on the New Tottenham Stadium. The project ran late, but the contractor’s exposure was limited and Spurs ended up with a fine venue.

That said, Laing O’Rourke managed to deliver Everton’s stadium through a fixed-price design-and-build contract despite building it through the turbulent Covid period.

“It delivered what we hoped it would,” Jacques says of the project when asked whether it was a commercial success for Laing O’Rourke. “It was not the huge commercial, financial risk that some people feared.” Although he does muse that, in a different market, the margin could have been better.

Jacques puts the project’s commercial success down to working hard upfront to understand and mitigate foreseen risks and then working closely with the client when the unexpected ones came along.  “Credit to the client’s team that we kept working [during Covid] when some projects were paused or stopped altogether,” he says. “We explained why momentum was important, and they understood that.”

There are plenty of stadium projects in the pipeline, including Newcastle United’s proposed Leazes Park Stadium, Manchester United’s New Trafford Stadium, plus new venues at Oxford, Luton and Peterborough. There are major expansions and redevelopments planned and underway too, such as the addition of 20,000 seats at Leeds United’s Elland Road and an upgrade to the North Stand of Aston Villa’s Villa Park to boost capacity by 50,000.

With a limited number of UK contractors that would take on the risk of a major design-and-build stadium job, and an equally limited number of contractors with the credentials to take the construction management role for such a project, who will build our future stadiums?

Luton Town found the answer overseas. Turkish contractor Limak won the contract to deliver Luton Stadium, reportedly beating off bids from Sir Robert McAlpine and Mace.

“Where the UK’s tier 1 and tier 2 contractors are not willing to take on design and build, others are happy to step in,” says Sayce. “They believe they can provide cost benefits from a different supply chain.” It remains to be seen whether overseas supply chains can shoulder risks that UK ones can’t. Perhaps the UK industry will be happy to watch them try.