Everton will use cutting edge computer software to show fans the view from their seat at the club’s new stadium before it even exists.
The tool will be used to give Blues fans a virtual panoramic view from any point inside Everton Stadium, currently been built at Bramley-Moore Dock and on schedule to open in 2024.
Colin Chong, Everton’s Chief Stadium Development Officer, told the ECHO: “There will be an opportunity for supporters to sit in a chair, put a headset on and say, 'that’s your view from your seat', even though we haven’t built the seats yet, people will be able to be able to get a sense of what their view will look like in the stadium. We’ll be looking to use it as a sales tool as much as anything else, to have the opportunity to say to people. ‘these are what’s available, where would you like to sit?’ and then they can get a sense of what the view will look like.
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“We’ll be doing the hospitality first, it’s more difficult to sell hospitality if we want to call it that, given that the facilities haven’t been built yet. but we couldn’t build it and then have time to sell it. so we’ve built it in the digital world and we’ll be utilising that in our sales suite at the Royal Liver Building that is due to open shortly.”
The software, which has been used to virtually construct the entire stadium from scratch several times, is also proving invaluable from a practical perspective. At Tottenham Hotspur, whose new stadium opened in 2019, there are understood to have been numerous delays because parts already installed had to be ripped out and put back in because other components had to be added and the existing work got in the way, but there should be no such problems with Everton’s high-tech approach.
Chong said: “Everton is the club of firsts and even the methodology with which we’re building this is new. You can see out on site, the materials arrive in kit form but some of the pieces of concrete that are coming in weigh tens of tonnes.
“There are structures of steel built in factories that are so complex, you probably couldn’t do it in the traditional manner without making a few mistakes and you don’t want to make mistakes while you’re building it and certainly not while you’re lifting it. This model can calculate lifting points, it can tell you where centres of gravity are, so it gives you that bit more security about how you lift and place certain pieces of structural kit.
“When you lift it up off the floor and it may not behave the way you expect it to but if you give it some thought within the model you can predict where you need to put the positive lifting points and how it will react.
“It’s an engineering project as much as anything else. While we might well think there’s a beam that runs through this location, until all the structural elements have been taken into consideration, we don’t really know how wide it’s going to be. The model will initially start with a beam and then we’ll find through the design development process, actually that beam needs to be another 300 or 600mm thicker and therefore we’ve got to reroute all the surfaces that go below it so we’re probably building it virtually several times.”
He added: “It’s a development of digital design. We’re using the latest software, CAD (computer-aided design) which is then turned into a Revit (4D) model and we build the site in its complete state. It helps with things like clash detection (two elements taking up the same space) and logistics, you can actually see how MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering) will fit in the space that you have provided for it, allowing you to make the mistakes in the digital world, check it on site and make sure that certain parts resemble what you’re actually building to give you the confidence that once you put it all together, it fits.
“The 4D element comes in when you want to apply a timeline element to it as well. We can build the stadium in sequence over the course of a programme period and it gives you the reassurance that when you’re putting these outputs into the model, it behaves the way you expect it to.”
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