Gold Coast’s Metricon Stadium has won the Buildings and Structures category in the 2012 Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards.

The award was presented to Arup in Brisbane on Friday 14 September. The $144 million ‘boutique stadium’ was designed collaboratively with Populous, Watpac and the shop detailers.

The win follows success earlier in this year at the Queensland Steel Design Awards where Metricon Stadium won two of the four categories.

The 25,000 seat stadium was intended to bring a completely fresh approach to stadium design, lifting the bar on cost-effective environmental design.

With its yellow steel skeletal support structure and distinctive golden ‘wave’ roof, the stadium features world-class, quick-dry playing surface and a lightweight fabric roof similar to other iconic Queensland and international sporting venues. Unique solar panelling will generate about 275,000 kWh of electricity a year, making it the largest installed solar power plant in the Southern Hemisphere.

Arup’s core team of stadium engineers helped to deliver a fast-tracked delivery of the stadium. Josh Neil, Arup’s project engineer for Metricon Stadium said:

“Metricon Stadium is a fantastic example of what a team effort and collaboration between all parties – the client, design team, builder and operator – can achieve on a very tight budget. This combination was involved in the project over a fairly intensive two year period culminating in opening day in April 2011.

“The Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards represent outstanding achievement and eminence in engineering, so for Metricon Stadium to be recognised at this level is an achievement we are very proud of.

“The end result is truly a credit to all involved and would not have been possible without the front end client vision of the likes of the AFL, Gold Coast City Council, Department of Works, Stadiums Queensland, builder Watpac, and of course, the architect Populous.”

Sustainable development in the project was a key goal in the design, from the investigation and re-use of existing civil infrastructure on a badly drained and flood prone site, to the cost-effective structural and facade design of a stadium – the firm’s technical input drove real innovation to reduce the environmental impact of this major sporting venue.

Project engineer Josh Neil of Arup, said wind engineering testing for the stadium was intensive. Wind tunnel tests carried out in Colorado by CCP involved numerous configurations with the roof and Southern Stand, environmental weather conditions testing, people on concourses and around stands and wind on the playing surface.

“Our façade team in Brisbane and Berlin was integral in the design and testing of the roof glazing incorporating the photovoltaic cells to ensure that they were capable of withstanding design wind loading as well as impact criteria,” Josh said.

As a winner in the Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards, Metricon Stadium is eligible for the National Engineering Excellence Awards to be held in Canberra on 20 November.

Architecture & Design Team

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