St George’s Park – The National Football Centre

2012 was a golden year for sport in this country. Hosting the Olympics was the culmination of a dream held out for a generation.
The nation demonstrated itself as a sporting entity, equal to any other in the world.

Similarly the nation’s construction and engineering skills were demonstrated across the globe, through a variety of Olympic projects.
Completed in July 2012 alongside many Olympic facilities and setting the scene for the future of the nation’s national sport, was another project, The National Football Centre at St George’s Park.
On a 330 acre greenfield site in the heart of England in the National Forest, Bowmer and Kirkland Ltd. set out to construct a £105m centre of excellence comprising 12 full size training pitches (five with underpitch heating), medical and science facilities, two Hilton hotels and pictured above, one of the largest indoor pitches in the world, a full size replica of the pitch at Wembley Stadium, along with world class corporate facilities.

The project provides a centre for training for each of the 24 English football teams from Under 16 level upwards to the full international squad.
It also provides a centre for training referees and coaches and teams from England and across the world.
Being a long standing sub contractor to Bowmer & Kirkland Ltd, emdd-universal were thrilled and proud to be invited to work on this project.
They were involved from the early stages of site preparation through to completion prior to the opening by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in July 2012.
The job demonstrated not only the full range of EMDD-UNIVERSAL’S technical skills, but also their ability to respond and perform on a rapid moving project of such complexity, that was completed on time and on budget.

In the words of Julie Harrington, Managing Director of SGP, “The builders have done a fantastic job to complete such an iconic building in such a short space of time.”
This was echoed by her Chairman, David Sheepshanks, who said of the project…
“To think all of this has been built and achieved in 72 weeks is nothing short of remarkable…this is the future.
This is where we will pursue excellence for English football.”