The retractable roof over Wimbledon’s No.1 Court is a triumph of engineering excellence, collaborative working, client engagement and exemplary project management. The roof is a worthy addition to the catalogue of world-class projects delivered by the company.

Its completion is the culmination of four years of work, not only to plan and install the new fixed roof, which supports the 11 large, moving steel trusses, each 70m long, but also to refurbish the No.1 Court’s hospitality facilities. This included upgrading the corporate suites and the food court to cater for the more than 40,000 people who visit Wimbledon every day of The Championships. All without any impact on the AELTC’s operation or its visitors.

The project included:

Installing a new retractable roof, with a new fixed roof to support it.
Refurbishing the hospitality areas – increasing the number of hospitality suites from eight to 15 by filling in four spaces between buildings.
Installing new M&E services providing heating and cooling to the stadium when the roof is closed.
Demolishing Court 19 and creating new basement space – we constructed this top down, casting the ground floor slab on king posts and then excavating the basement.
Replacing all the cladding on the building.
Refreshing the landscaping.
Creating nine new kitchens.

Project managing a challenging construction programme

At Wimbledon, The Championships must go on; a delay for building works is not an option. We had to make ourselves inconspicuous for three months of every year we spent on site: packing up our plant and equipment and making the No.1 Court safe for players and spectators alike.

That, in turn, gave us an unusually short construction programme. We were on-site for three years, but The Championships periods turned those three years into three nine-month cycles. This meant we had just 27 months to complete this exceptionally complex project, including handing back a safe and functional stadium for The Championships in 2017 and 2018.

With such an uncompromising construction programme, things had to move fast. Early in the project, we discovered that the concrete structure of the building required additional modification to make the design work. We revisited the design and undertook works to the existing building to limit the impact to the design and ensure the new steel elements fitted to the existing structure.

Designing Temporary Works

The new fixed roof consists of five massive trusses and a cantilevered tension ring to create the roof profile, which supports the moving trusses. Each of these roof trusses has its own unique geometry and had to be built piecemeal. This called in turn for vast amounts of temporary works to support them while they were built.

Bringing in a 610t crawler crane to erect the trusses for the moving part of the roof proved technically tricky, too. The ground floor slab was unable to support such a large weight, so we installed kilometres of props to take the load down into the basement.

Birdcage Scaffolding: a triumph in collaboration

We created a birdcage scaffold in the inner bowl to allow people on site to access the M&E systems, ventilation and soffit panels from below the roof. An example of true collaboration, the scaffolding was designed by our in-house McAlpine Design Group (MDG) with input from GKR, supplied by our Plant Department, and installed by our scaffolding subcontractor, GKR.

Our Kettering team, MDG and the subcontractor, GKR, combined their expertise to reduce the amount of scaffold and board cutting necessary by a significant amount, in turn reducing the amount of scaffolding we would need to scrap at the end of the project.

Innovative birdcage scaffold inside Wimbledon's No.1 Court, enabling safe access to M&E systems and ventilation panels below the roof.

What does it take to refurbish Wimbledon's No 1 Court

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For the past three years, we have been fitting a new retractable roof on No.1 Court at Wimbledon. To ensure the Grand Slam itself could proceed without a hitch, Project Director Gareth Healy’s team had to split the project lifecycle into three stages – a unique challenge. Watch Gareth Healy, Project Director, talk about completing No. 1 Court at Wimbledon.

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‘Very challenging from a technical perspective’ is how Laura Purton, Chief Engineer, describes the work installing a new retractable roof over No. 1 Court at Wimbledon. With a 600-tonne crane required to lift the trusses, and the team having to grapple with weather warnings and road closures, it would be fair to call the project a logistical challenge.

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Steve Ollington – a huge sports fan who never had the opportunity to visit Wimbledon until we took on the project – talks through his work using BIM modelling to fit the new retractable roof on No. 1 Court Wimbledon. Faced with a complex project brief, we applied cutting-edge 3D BIM modelling to streamline the works. Allowing quicker rectifications than traditional 2D systems.

Innovative birdcage scaffold inside Wimbledon's No.1 Court

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Working at Sir Robert McAlpine gives young graduates looking to build a career in construction the opportunity to work on some of the world’s most iconic sites. For Graduate Engineer and huge tennis fan Nick Pomfret, Wimbledon is the perfect project – and the opportunity to show off to friends. Hear what our graduates have to say about working at Sir Robert McAlpine.

Interior of the 750-seat auditorium at Wimbledon No.1 Court

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Delivering a site to brief and on time requires focus and hard work, but the team also had to grapple with the unique challenge of completing project phases in strict nine-month windows. Planner, Jay Ranade, explains how its smooth running was only possible thanks to tight collaboration with suppliers, construction teams, crane operators and sub-contractors.

Interior of the 750-seat auditorium at Wimbledon No.1 Court, refurbished with modern seating and acoustic design for optimal spectator experience.

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2016 was a momentous year for tennis fans – Andy Murray won his final Wimbledon, and it also saw the start of Sir Robert McAlpine’s work on the retractable roof on No.1 Court. Patrick Williams of The All England Lawn Tennis Club explains how the project is ‘too big and too complicated’ to take place without close collaboration across teams.

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