Work continues apace on the new £31 million sports facility situated on the former Ravenscraig steelworks in North Lanarkshire.

Part of a larger masterplan for the regeneration of this area of Scotland, this new indoor sports facility which will serve the local community as well as provide a training ground for competitive athletes, will feature an indoor artificial football pitch, a sports hall, gymnasium and an athletics hall, shorter span structures housing changing, dance and office facilities as well as outdoor pitches which will include 1x full size artificial and six 5-a-side pitches.

With the design and choice of materials influenced by the site's historic links to the steel industry, international multidisciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold has designed trusses constructed from rolled column and angle sections to form the main sports halls giving them the economical structure of a stepped roof profile with bolted connections for easy on site assembly.


In the football hall the trusses span 72m, and vary in profile from flat to arched, to form the profile of the building which reflects the internal headroom requirements of the football pitch.

All of the main halls use profiled metal cladding supported on purlins, with clear polycarbonate used for the roof northlights and the north elevations. The changing rooms and office block employs a composite beam and column structure to support slabs and flat roof decks.

Due to its location on a former steelworks site, the ground works were complicated by the extensive tunnels, basements, foundations and pipework underground.

Buro Happold's ground preparation therefore included dynamic compaction and the excavation and removal of basements and machinery. This provided the formation for the ground bearing foundations for the building, and for the car park and pitches. The site is served by a new combined heating and power unit, as part of the clients low energy strategy to the site.

Buro Happold principal Rod Manson said: "Whilst the project location proved quite challenging at times with the difficult legacy left by the site's former owners, it’s been a real honour for Buro Happold to be involved which a project that has the capacity to change so many of the local and regional communities' lives through the medium of sport. Who knows which future Scottish sporting champions will be produced by Ravenscraig – success stories that we, Buro Happold, will have played our part in."

(GK/KMcA)