"Construction News" Article
Construction News goes onsite with stadium specialist Buckingham Group as it constructs a new home for Brentford FC between three railway lines.
Project: The Brentford Community Stadium
Client: EcoWorld London
Contract value: £60m
Main contractor: Buckingham Group
Start date: April 2018
End date: Summer 2020
The red cherrypicker hangs a hard right the moment it emerges from the tunnel-like passage between stadium and railway line.
A worker in the cradle at the front bounces as the tyres twist on the dirt and the machine manoeuvres into position. On this job, unscheduled movements or imprecise parking are not tolerated, and for good reason.
Any overhanging booms or outstretched bumpers that infringe the narrow perimeter around the steel structure that will eventually become Brentford FC’s new home have the potential to block one of the site’s few vital access roads.
The 4 ha site is enclosed by a triangle of railway lines with the stadium and two clusters of residential blocks hemmed in between the lines. The blocks are being constructed simultaneously by the same client.
The route the cherrypicker is carefully navigating not only serves the steel contractor piecing together the upper sections of the east stand’s roof, it is also the path taken by the reversing cement mixers working on the luxury residential tower in the site’s north-east corner.
Maintaining access for the vehicles building the 910 apartments around the ground is crucial to the stadium’s progress in ways that go beyond logistics.
Funds from sales of the properties encircling the west London club’s new home will provide the cash to pay for the stadium’s construction.
Buckingham Group is the contractor handed the challenge of building Brentford’s 17,500-seater stadium, and must also ensure it is working smoothly with EcoWorld, the contractor building the adjoining residential developments.
Buckingham Group director for sports and leisure Kevin Underwood meets CN at the West London site on an unseasonably warm April morning, to explain exactly how his firm is tackling the task.
‘You can’t play football without a pitch’
Brentford FC’s move from Griffin Park, which it has occupied since 1904, has, like many a new stadium project, experienced a few delays.
The scheme received planning approval from Hounslow Council in June 2014, but the job did not get under way until last year.
Brentford adjusted its design and reduced its capacity from 20,000 to 17,500 to lower costs; the residential plans were also changed.
The most recent delay came last August, when the proposed move-in date of December 2019 was changed to August 2020, with the site’s limited space a key reason for the decision.
The proximity of the north stand to the railway line limits access around the side of the stadium. It means the undeveloped pitch offers a key route for the large vehicles of both Buckingham Group and EcoWorld to access the corner of the site.
A bridge over the railway line that borders the ground to the east has recently been completed, but before it was in place travelling across the pitch had been unavoidable.
Given the fact the grass pitch needs time to grow, the original December opening date became untenable.
“You can’t play football in a stadium without a pitch and you can’t grow a pitch in throughout the winter,” says Mr Underwood.
The decision to change the move-in date was made well in advance of the initial deadline, avoiding the usual hysteria associated with a delay to a football-related project.
The reception to the revised date was in stark contrast to the spectacle that greeted Spurs’ failure to open its stadium on time in September 2018, which came a month after Brentford’s announcement – although admittedly the Tottenham job is a good deal bigger.
“It was a natural thing that had to happen during the pre-construction process”, says Mr Underwood.
“We programmed it and it was fairly evident we needed access through the pitch as the bridge couldn’t be in until earlier in the year.”
When pressed by CN about whether he’s found cramming the stadium into such an awkward space difficult, Mr Underwood is unfazed.
“Any engineer likes a problem to try to solve, and that’s all it is”, he says.
‘Without the resi the stadium doesn’t happen’
Buckingham Group’s overall client for the project is not Brentford FC, but the club’s development partner EcoWorld London.
The Malaysia-based firm’s involvement in the project came at later stage through the acquisition the football club’s original partner Be Living, which is Willmott Dixon’s residential arm.
Brentford’s deal to build its new stadium is representative of how the method for getting stadium projects off the ground has changed.
In the past, big retailers would provide the capital for stadium projects.
Asda, for example, helped finance both Manchester City’s City of Manchester stadium and MK Dons’ Stadium MK in the early noughties, on the basis that they could build new stores adjacent to the sites.
The arrangement saw football clubs leverage the community value of a stadium to secure planning permission, using this to attract developers with the capital to make the project viable.
This model remains intact, but with retail developers replaced by a residential partner that provides the capital and builds flats as part of the overall development.
“Without the resi the stadium doesn’t happen and without the stadium the resi doesn’t happen”, says Mr Underwood.
“As the stadium contractor it’s absolutely vital to us that EcoWorld get these built or they’ll run out of money. We’ve got to make sure they get what they need to do their work as well.
“That puts some pressure on,” he adds with a smile.
The process of selling these properties also needs to be built into the planning of the scheme.
Flats need to be sold off-plan, which means the site needs an easily accessible show home onsite to woo prospective buyers.
Potential EcoWorld customers are guided down a billboarded pedestrian route to a shiny green box, where they can sample the finishes they can expect in the completed flats.
So far it seems the show home is doing its job. As CN takes a moment to gaze up at the residential tower from the back of the stand, one of Mr Underwood’s team informs him that despite currently being little more than a concrete lift shaft, 80 per cent of the flats in the building have already been sold.
Line blocks
It’s not just the pressure to successfully sell the apartment blocks around the stadium that drives the site’s strict schedule. Buckingham Group must also consider the demands of another neighbour, Network Rail.
The proximity of every corner of the site to an active rail line means the rail infrastructure manager must be contacted constantly about the works taking place.
If Buckingham Group wants to put up a crane or piling rig in a position on the site where it could conceivably fall onto the railway, Network Rail must put a line block in place, stopping any potential use of the route by trains.
The approval process for booking in line blocks is around four weeks and takes a lot of paperwork.
Luckily for Buckingham Group, which also works in the rail sector, it has an in-house team already familiar with Network Rail procedures.
Once the onsite team have decided on their programme of works, they are able to entrust the office-based unit to negotiate the closing of railway lines at the relevant times.
Not that Network Rail always sticks to the planned schedule. The rail client’s changes to the plan can often be made with a few hours’ notice, and the project team must act accordingly, delaying lifts and adjusting schedules.
Despite the pressures involved and the activity on the site, an atmosphere of calm is palpable throughout CN’s tour.
This is never more evident than when CN’s stood at the top of the south stand, from where the whole site can be observed.
At this stage at least, despite some major challenges, the drama is being saved for when the team kicks off life in its new home in August 2020.
The stadium experts’ expert
“If you can build a stadium here, you can build one anywhere,” quips Mr Underwood during CN's tour of the new ground.
The Buckingham Group boss should know. He is the stadium specialist at the contractor and is considered to be the sector’s expert.
His pedigree in sports stadiums goes back to the 90s, the decade when British stadium redevelopment really took off as clubs upgraded their facilities in the wake of the post-Hillsborough Taylor report, which specified all clubs in the top two divisions play in all-seater stadiums.
Mr Underwood cut his teeth in the sector by leading the 1998 construction of Reading FC’s Madejski Stadium.
But it was his second role at the helm of the expansion of Manchester United FC’s east and west stands that really gave him the taste for the market, which has become his niche.
He tells Construction News he enjoyed the pressure of delivering such a high-profile job, which was visited on regular basis by the club’s manager at the time, Sir Alex Ferguson, whom Mr Underwood got to know well as a result.
While the Old Trafford job may have introduced him to the stadium contracting arena, it was his work on the Milton Keynes Dons' Stadium MK that really established his name in the space.
It was also the job that made Buckingham Group the go-to contractor for stadium projects, although it had to prove a few doubters, including CN, wrong in the process.
Alfred McAlpine was originally lined up for the project, but a deal fell through after the contractor priced it £9m higher than the client’s budget.
Buckingham Group was already signed up to carry out the early works for the stadium. Seeing the opportunity to step up, Mr Underwood decided to make the case for Buckingham Group to be appointed as main contractor to MK Dons owner Pete Winkleman.
It was not an easy sell. The firm had a turnover of just £25m at the time and the original £47m contract was three times bigger than any project it had ever completed.
Asda, which was providing the financial backing for the development, took some convincing, but Mr Winkleman managed to talk it round and Buckingham landed the job.
The move nonetheless surprised the market. The CN article that revealed the news described the decision to hire a “minor league contractor” as an “unexpected turn”.
Delivered on time and to budget, the Stadium MK job propelled Buckingham Group from regional contractor to countrywide stadium specialist.
When the owners of Brighton and Hove Albion FC wanted to build a new stadium, they visited Stadium MK to inspect Buckingham Group’s handiwork. The trip convinced them to hand Buckingham the contract for the south coast team’s £89m Falmer Stadium.
More recently, the business completed the roof on Spurs’ £850m stadium, was appointed to build AFC Wimbledon’s new home and has been lined up for Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage redevelopment.
The steady flow of high-profile stadium jobs has also seen the firm’s balance sheet grow. The business’s most recent results show turnover grew to £423m with a healthy pre-tax profit of £16.7m on the previous year.
Project: The Brentford Community Stadium
Client: EcoWorld London
Contract value: £60m
Main contractor: Buckingham Group
Start date: April 2018
End date: Summer 2020
The red cherrypicker hangs a hard right the moment it emerges from the tunnel-like passage between stadium and railway line.
A worker in the cradle at the front bounces as the tyres twist on the dirt and the machine manoeuvres into position. On this job, unscheduled movements or imprecise parking are not tolerated, and for good reason.
Any overhanging booms or outstretched bumpers that infringe the narrow perimeter around the steel structure that will eventually become Brentford FC’s new home have the potential to block one of the site’s few vital access roads.
The 4 ha site is enclosed by a triangle of railway lines with the stadium and two clusters of residential blocks hemmed in between the lines. The blocks are being constructed simultaneously by the same client.
The route the cherrypicker is carefully navigating not only serves the steel contractor piecing together the upper sections of the east stand’s roof, it is also the path taken by the reversing cement mixers working on the luxury residential tower in the site’s north-east corner.
Maintaining access for the vehicles building the 910 apartments around the ground is crucial to the stadium’s progress in ways that go beyond logistics.
Funds from sales of the properties encircling the west London club’s new home will provide the cash to pay for the stadium’s construction.
Buckingham Group is the contractor handed the challenge of building Brentford’s 17,500-seater stadium, and must also ensure it is working smoothly with EcoWorld, the contractor building the adjoining residential developments.
Buckingham Group director for sports and leisure Kevin Underwood meets CN at the West London site on an unseasonably warm April morning, to explain exactly how his firm is tackling the task.
‘You can’t play football without a pitch’
Brentford FC’s move from Griffin Park, which it has occupied since 1904, has, like many a new stadium project, experienced a few delays.
The scheme received planning approval from Hounslow Council in June 2014, but the job did not get under way until last year.
Brentford adjusted its design and reduced its capacity from 20,000 to 17,500 to lower costs; the residential plans were also changed.
The most recent delay came last August, when the proposed move-in date of December 2019 was changed to August 2020, with the site’s limited space a key reason for the decision.
The proximity of the north stand to the railway line limits access around the side of the stadium. It means the undeveloped pitch offers a key route for the large vehicles of both Buckingham Group and EcoWorld to access the corner of the site.
A bridge over the railway line that borders the ground to the east has recently been completed, but before it was in place travelling across the pitch had been unavoidable.
Given the fact the grass pitch needs time to grow, the original December opening date became untenable.
“You can’t play football in a stadium without a pitch and you can’t grow a pitch in throughout the winter,” says Mr Underwood.
The decision to change the move-in date was made well in advance of the initial deadline, avoiding the usual hysteria associated with a delay to a football-related project.
The reception to the revised date was in stark contrast to the spectacle that greeted Spurs’ failure to open its stadium on time in September 2018, which came a month after Brentford’s announcement – although admittedly the Tottenham job is a good deal bigger.
“It was a natural thing that had to happen during the pre-construction process”, says Mr Underwood.
“We programmed it and it was fairly evident we needed access through the pitch as the bridge couldn’t be in until earlier in the year.”
When pressed by CN about whether he’s found cramming the stadium into such an awkward space difficult, Mr Underwood is unfazed.
“Any engineer likes a problem to try to solve, and that’s all it is”, he says.
‘Without the resi the stadium doesn’t happen’
Buckingham Group’s overall client for the project is not Brentford FC, but the club’s development partner EcoWorld London.
The Malaysia-based firm’s involvement in the project came at later stage through the acquisition the football club’s original partner Be Living, which is Willmott Dixon’s residential arm.
Brentford’s deal to build its new stadium is representative of how the method for getting stadium projects off the ground has changed.
In the past, big retailers would provide the capital for stadium projects.
Asda, for example, helped finance both Manchester City’s City of Manchester stadium and MK Dons’ Stadium MK in the early noughties, on the basis that they could build new stores adjacent to the sites.
The arrangement saw football clubs leverage the community value of a stadium to secure planning permission, using this to attract developers with the capital to make the project viable.
This model remains intact, but with retail developers replaced by a residential partner that provides the capital and builds flats as part of the overall development.
“Without the resi the stadium doesn’t happen and without the stadium the resi doesn’t happen”, says Mr Underwood.
“As the stadium contractor it’s absolutely vital to us that EcoWorld get these built or they’ll run out of money. We’ve got to make sure they get what they need to do their work as well.
“That puts some pressure on,” he adds with a smile.
The process of selling these properties also needs to be built into the planning of the scheme.
Flats need to be sold off-plan, which means the site needs an easily accessible show home onsite to woo prospective buyers.
Potential EcoWorld customers are guided down a billboarded pedestrian route to a shiny green box, where they can sample the finishes they can expect in the completed flats.
So far it seems the show home is doing its job. As CN takes a moment to gaze up at the residential tower from the back of the stand, one of Mr Underwood’s team informs him that despite currently being little more than a concrete lift shaft, 80 per cent of the flats in the building have already been sold.
Line blocks
It’s not just the pressure to successfully sell the apartment blocks around the stadium that drives the site’s strict schedule. Buckingham Group must also consider the demands of another neighbour, Network Rail.
The proximity of every corner of the site to an active rail line means the rail infrastructure manager must be contacted constantly about the works taking place.
If Buckingham Group wants to put up a crane or piling rig in a position on the site where it could conceivably fall onto the railway, Network Rail must put a line block in place, stopping any potential use of the route by trains.
The approval process for booking in line blocks is around four weeks and takes a lot of paperwork.
Luckily for Buckingham Group, which also works in the rail sector, it has an in-house team already familiar with Network Rail procedures.
Once the onsite team have decided on their programme of works, they are able to entrust the office-based unit to negotiate the closing of railway lines at the relevant times.
Not that Network Rail always sticks to the planned schedule. The rail client’s changes to the plan can often be made with a few hours’ notice, and the project team must act accordingly, delaying lifts and adjusting schedules.
Despite the pressures involved and the activity on the site, an atmosphere of calm is palpable throughout CN’s tour.
This is never more evident than when CN’s stood at the top of the south stand, from where the whole site can be observed.
At this stage at least, despite some major challenges, the drama is being saved for when the team kicks off life in its new home in August 2020.
The stadium experts’ expert
“If you can build a stadium here, you can build one anywhere,” quips Mr Underwood during CN's tour of the new ground.
The Buckingham Group boss should know. He is the stadium specialist at the contractor and is considered to be the sector’s expert.
His pedigree in sports stadiums goes back to the 90s, the decade when British stadium redevelopment really took off as clubs upgraded their facilities in the wake of the post-Hillsborough Taylor report, which specified all clubs in the top two divisions play in all-seater stadiums.
Mr Underwood cut his teeth in the sector by leading the 1998 construction of Reading FC’s Madejski Stadium.
But it was his second role at the helm of the expansion of Manchester United FC’s east and west stands that really gave him the taste for the market, which has become his niche.
He tells Construction News he enjoyed the pressure of delivering such a high-profile job, which was visited on regular basis by the club’s manager at the time, Sir Alex Ferguson, whom Mr Underwood got to know well as a result.
While the Old Trafford job may have introduced him to the stadium contracting arena, it was his work on the Milton Keynes Dons' Stadium MK that really established his name in the space.
It was also the job that made Buckingham Group the go-to contractor for stadium projects, although it had to prove a few doubters, including CN, wrong in the process.
Alfred McAlpine was originally lined up for the project, but a deal fell through after the contractor priced it £9m higher than the client’s budget.
Buckingham Group was already signed up to carry out the early works for the stadium. Seeing the opportunity to step up, Mr Underwood decided to make the case for Buckingham Group to be appointed as main contractor to MK Dons owner Pete Winkleman.
It was not an easy sell. The firm had a turnover of just £25m at the time and the original £47m contract was three times bigger than any project it had ever completed.
Asda, which was providing the financial backing for the development, took some convincing, but Mr Winkleman managed to talk it round and Buckingham landed the job.
The move nonetheless surprised the market. The CN article that revealed the news described the decision to hire a “minor league contractor” as an “unexpected turn”.
Delivered on time and to budget, the Stadium MK job propelled Buckingham Group from regional contractor to countrywide stadium specialist.
When the owners of Brighton and Hove Albion FC wanted to build a new stadium, they visited Stadium MK to inspect Buckingham Group’s handiwork. The trip convinced them to hand Buckingham the contract for the south coast team’s £89m Falmer Stadium.
More recently, the business completed the roof on Spurs’ £850m stadium, was appointed to build AFC Wimbledon’s new home and has been lined up for Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage redevelopment.
The steady flow of high-profile stadium jobs has also seen the firm’s balance sheet grow. The business’s most recent results show turnover grew to £423m with a healthy pre-tax profit of £16.7m on the previous year.
