Benchmark Scaffolding was appointed by William Hare to provide various scaffolds for the expansion of Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium North Stand, adding 7,000 seats and a hotel to the rear. The live stadium environment and complex cable-stayed roof design presented significant access challenges, all with minimal disruption to ongoing operations.

Our first major task involved designing a cantilevered access platform from the 6th floor to access the existing roof cables. This allowed the William Hare team to transfer the load from the original roof masts to the new steel frame, enabling the 100ft masts to be safely removed.

Later in the project, we were asked to provide access to the East and West towers to enable William Hare to fit the new roof support nodes.  Four considerable steel supports known as “cigars” needed to be accessed from the 6th floor on each corner. Our engineers worked collaboratively with the internal Willaim Hare technical department to develop a solution that would give safe access to operatives without clashing with the proposed works. Using a beamed cantilever section that was box-tied around the existing ring beam, a birdcage scaffold was erected from this structure to provide high level access for the William Hare operatives.

To reduce working-at-height risks, the beam section was pre-assembled on the ground and lifted into position using the tower crane. The lift was executed smoothly in coordination with the William Hare team, and the method was repeated on both East and West towers.

Despite cold conditions and complex logistics, the project was delivered safely, efficiently and exceeded expectations, with the client commenting: “The big top nodes on Manchester City Football Club got erected pretty cleanly using your scaffolds. It still took about 5 hours for each of them with 4 guys working the connections – so 100% justified the choice of using a scaffold rather than huge MEWPs. Great design from you guys and very well executed”.