“It was a valiant effort, with so many people working incredibly hard - it taught us some very valuable lessons about the system”
moving out. After the game, I had marked out on the centre of the pitch the oval shape that was to be left in, for the speedway track to be built around. We were leaving in just over 3000 modules for another week. Our deadline was midday on the Monday, and just to add to the pressure, there were penalty clauses in place if we weren’t finished. The articulated lorries were loaded with anything up to 60 modules at a time, and then transported to a Freightliner site about six miles from the stadium. The lorries arriving from the stadium
were unloaded and the modules stacked three high.
The weather was appalling on the night in question, and fortunately the stadium roof was closed. There was no such luxury at the rail terminal and the poor guys on the forklifts were working in atrocious conditions. The tall pylons of floodlighting seemed to be ineffective in the heavy squally rain and the guys found themselves unloading the lorries in a wet gloom by forklift headlights. By 6am Monday the last modules left the stadium and the ‘bowl’ was cleaned using a skid steer loader and then a road sweeper.
The Speedway guys arrived at 8am, delighted that they could start the track and wall construction much earlier than anticipated.
The following week, after the Speedway was finished, the haulage and forklift guys were back and the remaining modules were removed from the stadium and stacked at Freightliner as well. With the system stacked we decided to have a go at piecing a trial area together and successfully put a 15 x 15 matrix of modules together at the rail terminal. However, we had concerns about the integrity of the modules and also made an assessment of each of the modules that we randomly pulled from the stack. It is important to know that this system was installed into the Millennium Stadium in 1999 and was only the second GreenTech ITM system in use anywhere in the world. The only working example was at the Giants Stadium in New York, where two modular systems were in rotation. The Millennium system has therefore been in operation for about seven years, regularly moved in and out
First few pallets in
of the stadium. Each module has been lifted, stacked, transported, re-laid a fair number of times and many of the modules are starting to look tired and ready for replacement.
The stadium hosted two concerts, REM and U2. after the speedway and then the Watchtower convention moved in for three days of worship. As soon as their equipment was removed on the 20th July, we were back into the stadium to start the major operation of importing and piecing together over 4000 tons of modules and material. I had organised a surveying team to come into the stadium the week before and they had set out the 'bowl' from scratch, working with original drawings of the pitch. On the Tuesday that we started, one of the surveyors helped us to place the first line of modules in correctly. This first row, as we now realised, had to be absolutely exact. On the first shift we took 10 hours to place about 280 modules. The night shift took over from us at 6pm, ably supervised by Lee Evans (Head Groundsman) and through the night they laid another 770. Each shift consisted of 7 forklift drivers and 16 men, divided into three laying teams of four with a couple of general labourers, putting out feet and cleaning as we went. There were also three lorries working
around the clock bringing in the modules from the rail terminal and an extra forklift driver there to load the lorries with the drivers. On the Wednesday shifts nearly 2700 modules were placed, but we started to encounter problems of squareness again, and had to pull a few rows out and straighten the foot locator pads. By the Friday all the modules were in and we laid the concrete step blocks around the perimeter of the pitch. Given that this was our first attempt at piecing the pitch back together in the stadium, working to deadlines once again, I was extremely proud of the way the 45 or so staff had performed on the eight twelve hour shifts.
I had allowed a gap of two days between us finishing and SF Hodgkinson coming in to prepare the surface prior to turfing, this was in case of unseen problems- in the end we didn’t need this luxury.
The dead vegetation that still sat on Installing modules
top of the modules was Koro’d off and removed (thank God - the smell permeated every edifice within the stadium), and then the fibre rootzone was tickled up with a four metre stone rake. Over two days SF Hodgkinson’s contractor Derek Crane, achieved excellent levels and the surface was now prepared for the turf. I had no reason not to retain the Dutch company, Hendriks, for the supply and installation of the pitch. Their workmanship and quality of the turf delivered to date has been exceptional. Due to the nature of fixtures and events at the Millennium Stadium, this new pitch was only going to be in for three major games, the Charity Shield, the Powergen Rugby League Cup Final and the Wales v England World Cup Qualifier (WCQ) on the 3rd September. It didn’t seem that the surface had been in more than five minutes before we started to strip it out again on the evening of the 3rd September. England had just won a less than memorable game and as the stadium cleared of supporters, we removed the goals, while other guys de-rigged cameras/cables and advertising hoardings.
I had decided to strip off the turf with
the Koro (a crying shame), before removing the modules. This was for a number of reasons. One, so that we didn’t have a layer of stinking vegetation sitting on the modules when they came back; secondly, the next move back in was again against the clock, and we would be struggling with time to complete all operations, so removing the turf in advance saved us time a few weeks later; and thirdly, the cost saving of not having to pay a lot of extra labourers to cut around each of the 7388 modules. The pitch was Koro’d twice through the Saturday night, the lads finishing at 6:30am.
I stayed with them through the night, catching a couple of hours sleep on a sofa. At 8am the haulier (eight lorries) and the forklift drivers arrived, and immediately found it easier to pick up and stack the turf stripped modules. The team worked efficiently through the day and by 11pm the site was clear of modules and concrete edge blocks. The stadium tarmac was again cleared of spoil, and swept spotless with road sweepers. The next events due in were a
Pitch in
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