Giant beams topping off Eden Park's south stand

Brent Fleming (left) and Dave Randell in the south stand. The new building includes a police holding cell. Photo / Greg Bowker

The final phase of Eden Park's new south stand has begun, with 33m-long beams lifted on to the roof.

The stand is the biggest building in the $240.5 million upgrade of Eden Park and construction reached a milestone early this month when Fletcher Construction celebrated a year on the job.

Site manager Brent Fleming said each roof beam was 3m deep, constructed in a number of sections, and some of the largest ceiling beams made in New Zealand.

The beams are so big that they are being trucked to the site in a knocked-down state and swung into place by a tower crane in sections.

Workers nicknamed the first roof beam section "the praying mantis" because of its bug-like appearance.

Half the beams were made in Auckland and the rest in Napier. Fabrication of the steel beams took six months, Mr Fleming said.

The roofing programme is scheduled to run until Christmas.

By November, Fletcher will start putting up the series of huge silver fern structural/design features on the stand's exterior.

Mr Fleming said each fern would be 30m high and 13m wide at the base.

They are being built by Culham Engineering in Whangarei and general manager Rob Kirwan said his firm would begin putting the ferns on the stand next month.

Vehicles can now drive into a 200m-long underground tunnel beneath the stand via the main curved vehicle access ramp on the Mt Eden side.

The tunnel is large enough for tour coaches and will allow a direct and secure access to changing rooms and for the deliveries to kitchen areas beneath the building.

A police holding cell has also been built under the stand.

The lower exterior levels now sport "scrum panels", a rugby-themed cladding.

Each panel is 8m long and 2m wide and covers the lower part of the building from levels one to three. Mr Fleming said the panels were concave and designed to interlock in an architectural design reference to the rugby formation.

Shadow and sunlight plays on the panels to highlight their shape and the natural colours in the materials, he said. Each panel weighs 6 tonnes and all 178 are now in place.

Mr Fleming said flooring was completed in seven out of 30 bays on level six of the stand.

Its low-energy facade will include ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene), which featured in the roof of the Water Cube swimming centre at the Beijing Olympics.

Demolition of the neighbouring east stand is finished and ground works have started.

Eden Park site superintendent Dave Randell said test bores would ascertain subterranean lava flows and rock. Foundations were expected to be sunk up to 4m, he said.

Peter Neven, general manager of Fletcher Construction's building division, said his firm had been on the job for one year.

The Eden Park project director for Fletcher is Alan Gray.

Work is to be finished towards the end of next year so the facilities can be used for one full season before Rugby World Cup 2011.