Sports Stadia Inspection & Appraisal

Beta Design Consultants support owners and maintenance managers of sports stadia ensure the structural safety and compliance of their assets. 

We provide annual inspections, structural appraisals and structural defects lists to clients. If any defects are found, we provide advice and recommendations on how to remedy them and specifications for structural repairs. If monitoring is required, we provide advice on how to carry out this structural monitoring. If load testing is required, we also advise clients and provide a brief on the extent and details of such load tests.

In the UK, the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (Green Guide) recommends the following:

• A detailed, annual inspection of all structures, installations and components (Section 5.12 of the Green Guide). We provide In essence, an annual inspection is a visual, non-intrusive structural inspection of all structures, installations and components in the ground.  
• A detailed structural appraisal carried out at regular intervals (every six to ten years) (Section 5.13 of the Green Guide). We provide structural appraisals in the form of a more detailed and often intrusive inspection which may include comprehensive review and testing of structural elements. Tests may include non-destructive testing NDT of concrete and steel elements as well as some intrusive testing to confirm material properties and identify the extent of any structural defect, deterioration or corrosion.

Beta Design Consultants Annual Inspections of Sports Stadia

We support clients by providing annual inspections that are a critical way of identifying and addressing potential structural issues before they become a problem. These are carried out by consulting structural engineers with appropriate qualifications and experience in the field. Our Consulting Chartered Structural Engineers are experienced in the inspection and assessment of sports stadia and have experience in the identification of structural defects in various materials and as such can provide the correct diagnosis and put things "in context".

Our annual visual inspections would cover:

• the condition of the structure of the sports ground, to identify any obvious structural defects such as signs of structural distress and deformation or material deterioration.
• whether loading on the various structural elements is as was originally intended and that no unauthorised adaptations have occurred which could impact upon the design loading of the elements.

If our Chartered Structural Engineers detect signs of significant structural deterioration or defects are present, we provide a professional assessment of the deterioration or defect and recommend appropriate actions to be taken.  Such actions may involve repair works or full structural investigation/analysis to parts or whole of the sports ground.

The deliverable of our annual inspection is a report that details structural defects with a rating of urgency to allow decisions makers at the venue to develop a scheduled programme of repair to address the recommendations of the report. On request, we can offer market engagement exercises to estimate budgets of repairs to allow clients to secure funding prior to tendering works. 

Beta Design Consultants Structural Appraisals of Sports Stadia

We provide a structural appraisal which require a more detailed and rigorous assessment of the sports ground. This is conducted every six to ten years, as recommended by the Standing Committee for Structural Safety (SCOSS). Our team includes Experienced Chartered Structural Engineers who go beyond the criteria outlined in Section 5.13 of the Green Guide by bringing life extension perspective, structural repair expertise and hands-on-experience in the specification and supervision of various techniques of structural strengthening.

The structural appraisal would be greatly assisted by the availability of full detailed drawings of the sports ground but our experience has shown that many older sports grounds may not benefit from the presence of such drawings. In such cases we provide structural investigation, material testing and NDT services to obtain key information and material properties to aid the structural appraisal. The structural appraisal would then be conducted with due diligence based on the findings of the structural investigation to allow for the structural assessment and reporting on all the elements of the inspection. 

Beta Design Consultants provide Sports Stadial structural appraisals that include:

• obtaining information relating to the design, construction, maintenance and history of the building
• assessing the structural adequacy of the ground by checking the structural plans and calculations and reconstructing the structural plans if they are not available;
• carrying out intrusive tests, non-destructive tests (NDT) on the materials used and structural elements of the ground;
• carrying out load tests on parts of the building as necessary - which are either carried out by ourselves or arranged by the client under our supervision
• recommending appropriate safety precautionary and remedial measures to restore the structural stability and integrity of the structure.

We use the latest structural codes and industry criteria for the detailed structural appraisal taking into account the following:

• load factors used in the original design
• the degree of redundancy present
• the risk of disproportionate collapse
• the consequence of failure
• the requirements of the certifying authority, where appropriate.

Unlike the annual inspection, the structural appraisal provides clients with detailed evidence of the continuing satisfactory performance of the sports stadium structural components and expected life span of the structural elements. It also includes the findings of the intrusive and NDT tests, structural assessment outcome including any over-stresses considering material properties and deterioration, conclusions and any recommendations with a timescale for execution to support the decision makers. On request, we may support clients obtain market budget estimates of the required works to allow budgets to be allocated prior to tendering the works.